The strongest, most morally charged disgust.
The strongest, most morally charged disgust — recoiling from something held to be evil or intolerable.
The strongest and most morally loaded member: not just intense disgust but moral condemnation and a sense of being shocked by something evil or contrary to one's deepest principles (“abhorrence of war,” “Slavery is an abhorrence”). Where loathing is disgust fused with personal hatred, abhorrence is disgust fused with principled, often public moral rejection. Its root — “to shrink back from in horror” — gives it a recoiling-in-horror flavor that plainer disgust lacks. More formal and elevated; used for abstractions and moral categories.
1650s, from abhorrent + -ence; from Latin abhorrere “to shrink back from, shudder at” (ab “away from” + horrere “to bristle, shudder” — the root of horror). The literal sense is “to recoil from in horror.”
Entered English with its strong “extreme aversion/detestation” sense in the late 16th–17th century. The main documented shift is from the milder classical Latin sense (“be out of harmony with, differ from”) to the intense English “recoil from in horror.” No reliable recent-generation shift.