[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]

 

The Latin phrase annus horribilis (literally: a horrible year) designates a disastrous or particularly unpleasant year.

It was coined after the Latin phrase annus mirabilis (literally: an extraordinary year), designating:
– originally: a year of extraordinary events, especially when regarded as omens or portents;
– in later use: a year of outstanding success or notable achievement for a particular person, group, etc., or within a particular sphere of activity.

Elizabeth II (1926-2022), Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1952 to 2022, famously used the phrase annus horribilis in a speech at a luncheon given on Tuesday 24^th November 1992 by the Corporation of London to mark her 40^th year on the throne. This speech was quoted as follows in the Evening Echo (Bournemouth, Dorset, England) of Tuesday 24^th November 1992 [page 2, column 4]:

“1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure.
“In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an ‘Annus Horribilis’. I suspect that I am not alone in thinking it so.
“Indeed I suspect that there are very few people or institutions unaffected by these last months of worldwide turmoil and uncertainty.”

The earliest occurrences that I have found of the phrase annus horribilis in English texts are as follows, in chronological order:

1-: From The Beginning of a Year, published in The Westmorland Gazette and Kendal Advertiser (Kendal, Westmorland, England) of Saturday 5^th January 1867 [page 4, column 5]:

A particular period of the earth’s relations with the sun is always made the opportunity for a great many reflections, sage or otherwise, and a starting point for a number of wise resolutions most likely evanescent. There is nothing either political or moral in any one day in the calendar, but the termination of a year is sure to supply us with any amount of comment, retrospective or anticipatory. The old year, which went out on Monday night in a shroud of white, suggestive of what may happen to any of us before the year is over, has been heartily abused. He is described as a sort of Annus Horribilis. Mr. Punch denounces him with comic vehemence, and depicts him being ignominiously kicked out in the likeness of an ugly old collapsed puppet by old Father Time.

2-: From The Daily Telegraph (London, England) of Wednesday 3^rd January 1872 [page 5, column 2]:

Martial law yet reigns, and Paris is still politically decapitalised—an infected city, to be shunned by her Chief Magistrate and her legislators. To crown all the horrors and the disasters of the annus horribilis, the foreigner is still in France; the German heel is firmly set on the neck of the nation.

3-: From A Calamitous Year, published in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, Missouri, USA) of Monday 12^th May 1884 [page 3, column 4]—reprinted from the Troy Times:

Last year was remarkable for the number, frequency and appalling results of its great calamities. […]
[…]
[…] The present year has witnessed a considerably larger sacrifice of human life through calamities of various sorts than did 1883, which stands as an annus horribilis in the history of calamities.

4-: From Art. VI.—Möhler, Döllinger, and Oxford Anglicanism, published in The London Quarterly Review (London, England) of October 1890 [page 105]:

In A.D. 1854 was announced the ominous dogma of the “Immaculate Conception” of the Virgin. This cast a stumbling-block, disheartening indeed, in the way of those who thought they were in the path which should unerringly lead to “unity” on the episcopal foundation. But in 1870, annus horribilis, the dogma of “Infallibility” for ever closed the door of hope.

5-: From one of the unconnected paragraphs making up the column Crystals, published in The Darling Downs Gazette (Darling Downs, Queensland, Australia) of Wednesday 21^st June 1893 [page 3, column 7]:

Annus horribilis—1893.

6-: From Year One of the Empire, published in The Nation (New York City, New York, USA) of Thursday 8^th February 1900 [page 105, column 2]:

It is now a full year since the treaty with Spain was ratified, and the ignoble and bloody war in the Philippines began—a true annus horribilis.

7-: From Our London Correspondence, published in The Manchester Guardian (Manchester, Lancashire, England) of Tuesday 28^th October 1902 [page 6, column 5]:

The fearful crime of which the Joyces were convicted—nothing less than the massacre of an entire family—occurred in 1882, the annus horribilis of recent Irish history.