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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
terrorize
verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ A gang of youths are roaming the city, vandalising stores, starting fires, and terrorizing people.
▪ Drug dealers have been terrorizing the neighborhood.
▪ Some of the older children dominated the playground and terrorized the smaller kids.
▪ With threats, beatings, and even murder, the workers were terrorized into leaving their unions.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Harsh discipline was the child's lot, and they were often terrorized deliberately and, not infrequently, sexually abused.
▪ Her imagination took hold of the idea and terrorized her at the thought of the hospital catching fire.
▪ Nature blesses, haunts and terrorizes Inverness.
▪ The terrorized novice promptly returned it, claiming that he was being haunted by apparitions for his act.
▪ The local railway administrators were terrorized into collaborating.
▪ We renew our fight against those who seek to terrorize us in your names.
▪ Wilson said that post-traumatic stress disorder sufferers who have been terrorized typically fear imminent death.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Terrorize

Terrorize \Ter"ror*ize\, v. t. [Cf. F. terroriser.] To impress with terror; to coerce by intimidation.

Humiliated by the tyranny of foreign despotism, and terrorized by ecclesiastical authority.
--J. A. Symonds.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
terrorize

"coerce or deter by terror," 1823, from terror + -ize (also see terrorism). Related: Terrorized; terrorizing; terrorization.

Wiktionary
terrorize

vb. 1 (cx: transitive) to fill (someone) with terror; to terrify 2 (cx: transitive) to coerce (someone) by using threats or violence

WordNet
terrorize
  1. v. coerce by violence or with threats [syn: terrorise]

  2. fill with terror; frighten greatly [syn: terrify, terrorise]

Usage examples of "terrorize".

Terrorists have used anthrax bacteria to infect, to kill, and to terrorize innocent people.

For the most part, what we knew about anthrax was based on how it occurred naturally--not on how it could be used by terrorists with the intent to kill and to terrorize.

He believed Hill to be a cunning scoundrel who had overreached the police for some purpose of his own by accusing Birchill, and who, to make his story more probable, had even implicated himself in the supposed burglary as a terrorized accomplice.

He knew he was sitting two stools away from the psychopathic killer who was terrorizing the city.

AWACS and close brother to the COD, a twin-prop aircraft whose radome makes it look like an airplane being terrorized by a UFO.

Pam Bichon was my friend and business partner, and it infuriates me that the focus on her case has shifted to the rights of the man who terrorized and killed her.

She had died when he was very small, abducted and presumably killed by Danian brigands, a presumption that his brother amplified in order to terrorize Aufors.

The Germans had thousands and they terrorized the farmboy turned doughboy who returned home with tales of its awesome power.

They were one of the notorious juv gangs that roamed the back ways of the city, terrorizing anyone who strayed away from the bright lights.

When the wandering stranger found how ignorant we were on the subject, he began to entertain us with stories regarding the Lernaean Hydra, which he claimed was terrorizing folk who lived near the marshes of Lerna near Argos, which lay hundreds of miles overland from where we were.

While you, my dear Tungata, are a sprig of the house of Kumalo, the old robber chiefs of the Matabele, who for a hundred years 258 raided and terrorized the legitimate owners of this land, the Mashona people.

While you, my dear Tungata, are a sprig of the house of Kurnalo, the old robber chiefs of the Matabele, who for a hundred years raided and terrorized the legitimate owners of this land, the Mashona people.

And no Medinan thugs are going to find us, or terrorize us, or stop us.

I had performed no heroic measures, the ones that, bright with prudence, you wisely do not perform in the daytime but whose nonperformance terrorizes your conscience following the arrival of dusk.

Since then negotiations had been stalled, the Ossetians were terrorizing western Georgia, the Chechens eastern Georgia, and taxes seemed to disappear into a black hole.