Donner des réponses. - English

100% GOOD (1 votes)RéponduQuestion Linguistique
What horror! or What a horror! (why, but horror is uncountable)?


PS: Immerse yourself in these free English lessons: Module: Verbosity or CircumlocutionAlternate(ly) and alternative(ly)Although VS Even thoughPunctuation

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ClarkR profile picture ClarkROctober 2017

In the US, if there's a news story about a mother killing her child for example, it's more common to hear something like 'How horrible!' Using 'a horror', 'what horror', 'such horror', like horror is a *thing or a quantity, sounds kind of older or more poetic (except as in horror *movies specifically, or the horror movie genre), and so can be used like that or else very sarcastically.

 

(i.) A man returns from the battlefield, eyes empty...What horror, he whispers.

(ii.) Return of the Fly King had terrible acting, but the horror was cool.

(iii.) Did you see that awful dress she's wearing? What a horror.

(iv.) Marlon Brando in the movie Apocalypse Now: "The...horror." D:

Mithrawnurro profile picture MithrawnurroNovember 2017
Horror is a very general term. Similar to the word, "Crime". We can say, "a crime" but many times it's treated as a non-count because it's a very general term. Crime could be anything from Jaywalking to homicide. Those are apples and oranges. Horrors can also be anything....far too general to treat it as a count noun all the time.
jercar123 profile picture jercar123October 2017

You can use 'horrors' ....Also for a replacement pronoun the spelling is "whore" : )