Terrible means extremely bad. A terrible film, terrible weather, a terrible mistake. It is one of the strongest everyday negative adjectives and it is used constantly, often for things that are merely disappointing.
The literal meaning is causing terror, and that survives in a few serious uses — a terrible accident, terrible injuries — where the word is not being exaggerated at all. Keep terrible and terrific apart: they come from the same root and now mean opposite things, terrific having drifted to mean excellent. The adverb terribly is doubly odd: terribly sorry and terribly kind are intensifiers with no negative sense left in them at all.
1adjectiveterribleExtremely bad or unpleasant.
“The traffic was terrible all the way home.”
2adjectivecausingCausing fear or great distress.
“It was a terrible accident and nobody spoke about it afterwards.”
3adjectivefeelingFeeling ill or very guilty.
“I felt terrible about forgetting her birthday.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
terrible is a degree of badness.
Also accepted in games: awful, horrible
Latin terribilis meant frightful, from terrere, to frighten — the same verb behind terror, terrify and deter. English kept the fear in the serious uses and wore it away in the everyday ones, which is how the same word covers a war and a haircut.
Middle English
terrible
English, today
terrible
Built from
From Middle English terrible. Middle English terrible, from Old French terrible, from Latin terribilis (“frightful”), from terreō (“to frighten, terrify, alarm; to deter by terror, scare (away)”). Compare terror, deter. by surface analysis, terror + -ible. atol and sliþe, while also largely overtaking grimm.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA