Frisson

DEFINITION

A feeling of excitement, usually brief. Although somewhat pleasureable, this sensation is caused by fear or the expectation that something is going to happen. It comes from a French word for shiver, from Old French fri?on, from Late Latin friction-, frictio; which in turn came from Latin, literally, friction. It was first used as an English word in 1777.(pr. free-SOHn)Also see aesthetic experience, compare, dissonance, edge, expression, grotesque, incongruity, interesting, juxtaposition, pain, and tension.