shudder

Related to shudder: Shudder to Think

I shudder to think

It is too worrying or unpleasant for me to think about something that might happen or might have happened. I shudder to think what my boss will say when I tell him I lost our biggest client.
See also: shudder, think
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

I shudder/dread to ˈthink (how, what, etc....)

(informal, often humorous) I am afraid to think or ask myself about something, because the answer might be terrible or unpleasant: I shudder to think when he last had a bath. ‘How much more work is there?’ ‘I dread to think!’
See also: dread, shudder, think
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • I shudder to think
  • I shudder/dread to think
  • dread
  • I dread to think
  • think out of the box
  • think back
  • go against the flow
  • What are you on?
  • never in a month of Sundays
  • What color is the sun in your world?
References in periodicals archive
I experience in it the shudder of two different selves coming together.
Eva Hesse
The prospect of one slight miscalculation makes you shudder here, unlike in the earlier, inchoate Bounce (1994).
Elizabeth Streb/Ringside
When I force my mind back to 1980, I shudder. What was I thinking?
Be afraid, be very afraid
And so the aesthetic pleasure of the modern photograph is complicated by disgust, at once undermined and furthered by culinary shudder and gustatory gag reflex.
"Wols photographs."
With a glittery shudder, a figure vanishes from view.
Instant transport: achieving quantum teleportation in the laboratory
As I spent some time in Sri Lanka and made great friends, I shudder to think what they are going through.
Dear Mirror: IN BRIEF
Although I shudder at having been spoon-fed Christianity, I've come to appreciate that reciting passages regularly transforms prayer into ritual, carrying us beneath familiar words towards deeper connectedness.
In praise of public praise
You shudder to think of Quentin's one long diatribe as Williams's grim self-portrait or his sweeping summation of gay life.
Small Craft Warnings
The report has also sent a shudder through the research community, which some scientists claim has become complacent about resistant microbes.
A new gap in the antibiotic arsenal
Lines are clean, precise; explosive jumps find a sure-tooted descent; high extensions pierce the void; contractions shudder percussively; falls make a pact with gravity.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Anyone who has ever done a house share at the Russian River or Fire Island Pines will shudder in recognition.
Racing for their lives
Those oral quirks aren't easily replicated, but Shudder to Think, Grant Lee Buffalo, and Pulp summon forth the appropriate sighs and whispers on glittering new tunes.
Pick of the glitter
"Straight people don't know anything," he says with a shudder.
Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue
THIS picture should send a shudder down the elegant spines of supermodels Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell - these girls are after their jobs.
Watch out Kate we're taking over
We shudder as they act upon the imaginary intimacy projected by the professional goodwill of the star.
Confessions of another pretty lady