terror / terrorism / terrorist

Terrorism is not simply a modern phenomenon; it’s existed since time immemorial. But it wasn’t until the French Revolution that it was given its name.

Its root, terror, dates to the fifteenth century in English use. It is a borrowing from the Anglo-Norman terrour and the Latin terror, which were both used to mean extreme fear or dread. The word starts appearing in English texts by the end of the fourteenth century, when it appears in a Scottish poetic life of St. George that was composed sometime before 1400 with a manuscript witness from c. 1480:

for he wes anerly þat ane
þat of criste þe treutht had tan,
þat but rednes ore terroure
of goddis son wes confessoure.

(For he was only the one that the truth of Christ had taken, that for shame and terror of God’s son he was a confessor.)

So, for several centuries terror had the basic meaning that we know today, extreme fear.

The political use of the term came with the postrevolutionary Jacobins, whose rule of France in 1793–94 is known as The Terror. In this historical use it is usually capitalized. This label appears in English by 1798 in the diary of Theobald Wolfe Tone for 26 April 1798, who equated the depredations of the Jacobins with the English in Ireland:

I see in the Paris papers today extracts from the English ones of a late date by which it appears, as I suspected, that the news of an insurrection in Ireland was at least premature. Nevertheless things in that country seem to be drawing fast to a close; there is a proclamation of Lord Camden's, which is tantamount to a declaration of war, and the system of police (if police it can be called) is far more atrocious than ever it was in France, in the height of the Terror.

So, terror became associated with violent actions of a state in the oppression of its people. For instance, there is this more recent example from the New York Review of Books of 20 December 2007:

The legacy of the first Ming emperor was cast into rigid institutions (which themselves unconsciously reflected the brutalization that had been inflicted on Chinese political life under Mongol rule): the great tradition of the civil service was perverted and turned into a regime that contained the seeds of its own destruction. State terror was practiced on a staggering scale; the huge political trials staged by the Ming despot against his imaginary enemies suggest a sort of eerie preview of the great Stalinist purges that were to take place in our age.

But terrorism is usually associated with a related, but different sense. That is the use of violence by a non-state actor to achieve a political end. Sometimes such terrorism is sanctioned by a government and carried out by paramilitary forces. Again, this a borrowing from French, although modern French this time: terrorisme. An early use of terrorism in English is by Thomas J. Mathias in his 1796 satirical poem The Pursuits of Literature. The word appears in a footnote. I don’t have access to a scan or copy of the original May 1796 printing, but the footnote and word are in the third edition the following year. But here, terrorism seems to be used in reference to government action, albeit perhaps illegal or extrajudicial violence:

Since the passing of the Bills (in 1795) against treason, seditious meetings, assemblies, lectures, harangues, &c. John Thelwall read during the Lent season, 1796, what he termed Classical Lectures, and most kindly and affectionately pointed out the defects of all the ancient governments of Greece, Rome, Old France, &c. &c. and the causes of rebellion, insurrection, regeneration of governments, terrorism, massacres, or revolutionary murders; without the least hint or application to England and its constitution. Shewing how the Gracchi were great men, and so, by implication, the Bedfords, the Lauderdales, &c.—I must own, I fear nothing from such Lectures.

Thelwell was a radical English orator who was tried and acquitted of treason in 1794. The following year, in order to avoid censorship and another treason charge, he started using ancient history, without reference to current English politics, as the subject of his speeches.

Within a decade of the printing of that poem, we see terrorist applied to individuals who use violence for political ends. In the following we see it used in reference to the suppression of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 by Charles Cornwallis, who while he proved himself an able colonial administrator in Ireland and India, is perhaps best known today for his surrender of British forces to George Washington in 1781. This description of Cornwallis’s actions in Ireland is from Francis Plowden’s 1806 Historical Review of the State of Ireland:

It had been lamented by many, that the Marquis Cornwallis, a viceroy of military talent, of benevolence, and humanity, and above all, of political firmness to resist and keep down the fatal influence of those, who had extorted the bloody system from his predecessor, should not have been sent sooner to that distracted kingdom. But the affected zeal for the constitution, the artful misrepresentation of facts, and the undaunted fierceness of those terrorists, had too long usurped the power of the viceroy, and abused the confidence of the British cabinet. It was, however, some atonement to poor suffering Ireland, that an appointment was at last made of a nobleman, supereminently fitted to heal her wounds, by a system of measures diametrically contrary to those which had inflicted and inflamed them. Within very few days after his lordship's arrival in Dublin, a proclamation was issued, authorizing his majesty's generals to give protection to such insurgents as, being simply guilty of rebellion, should surrender their arms, abjure all unlawful engagements, and take the oath of allegiance to the king.

To end on a lighter note, the noun terror is also used to mean a troublesome person, especially a young child. This sense dates to the late nineteenth century. Here is a rather misogynist example that appeared in the magazine London Society in 1876:

There are moments when a man’s wife is simply awful. Snugly intrenched behind the unassailable line of defence, duty, and with such “Woolwich Infants” as her children to hurl against you, which she does in a persistent remorseless way, she is a terror.

(Woolwich Arsenal in southeast London has manufactured ammunition for the British forces since the beginning of the nineteenth century.)

This sense of terror is often found in the phrase holy terror, referring to a troublesome child. Here is an example from 1883 using the phrase to refer to Peck’s Bad Boy, a fictional, young prankster created by newspaperman George W. Peck:

“Well, have you read ‘Peck’s Bad Boy’!”

To reply in the negative was to ruin your literary reputation and make you an object of pity and commiseration.

News agents on the Railroad cars found it almost impossible to meet the demand of those who yearned to become acquainted with this “holy terror.”

Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, AND2 Phase 6, 2022–25, terrour, n.

Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1879, s.v. terror, n. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Leys, Simon. “Ravished by Oranges.” New York Review of Books, 20 December 2007. NYRB Online.

Mathias, Thomas James. Pursuits of Literature: A Satirical Poem. Part II, third edition, revised. London: T. Becket, 1797, 21. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Middle English Dictionary, 8 October 2025, s.v. terrour, n.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, September 2011, s.v. terror, n. & adj., terrorism, n., terrorist, n. & adj.; 1899, s.v. holy, adj. & n.

Peck, George Wilbur. “Introduction.” Mirth for the Million. Peck’s Compendium of Fun. San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1883, viii. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Plowden, Francis. An Historical Review of the State of Ireland, vol. 5 of 5. Philadelphia: William F. McLaughlin and Bartholomew Graves, 1806, 44–46. HathiTrust Digital Library.

“St. George.” In Metcalfe, W. M., ed. Legends of the Saints in the Scottish Dialect of the Fourteenth Century, vol. 2. Scottish Text Society. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1896, lines 699–702, 196. fol. 264v. Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg. 2.6. HathiTrust Digital Library.

“Simpson’s Snipe.” London Society, Holiday issue 1876, 13–20 at 13/2. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Tone, Theobald Wolfe. “Diary entry, 26 April 1798.” In T. W. Moody, R. B. McDowell, and G. J. Woods, eds. The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1763–98, vol 3. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007, 245. Oxford Scholarly Editions Online.

Photo credit: Unknown photographer, US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 1985. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.