Library / English Dictionary

SCARE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A sudden attack of fear

Synonyms:

panic attack; scare

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Hypernyms ("scare" is a kind of...):

fear; fearfulness; fright (an emotion experienced in anticipation of some specific pain or danger (usually accompanied by a desire to flee or fight))

Derivation:

scare (cause fear in)

scary (provoking fear terror)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Sudden mass fear and anxiety over anticipated events

Example:

a bomb scare led them to evacuate the building

Synonyms:

panic; scare

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("scare" is a kind of...):

anxiety; anxiousness ((psychiatry) a relatively permanent state of worry and nervousness occurring in a variety of mental disorders, usually accompanied by compulsive behavior or attacks of panic)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "scare"):

red scare (a period of general fear of communists)

Derivation:

scare (cause to lose courage)

scary (provoking fear terror)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Cause fear in

Example:

Ghosts could never affright her

Synonyms:

affright; fright; frighten; scare

Classified under:

Verbs of feeling

Hypernyms (to "scare" is one way to...):

excite; shake; shake up; stimulate; stir (stir the feelings, emotions, or peace of)

Cause:

dread; fear (be afraid or scared of; be frightened of)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "scare"):

bluff (frighten someone by pretending to be stronger than one really is)

awe (inspire awe in)

terrify; terrorise; terrorize (fill with terror; frighten greatly)

intimidate (make timid or fearful)

alarm; appal; appall; dismay; horrify (fill with apprehension or alarm; cause to be unpleasantly surprised)

consternate (fill with anxiety, dread, dismay, or confusion)

spook (frighten or scare, and often provoke into a violent action)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody
Something ----s somebody

Sentence examples:

Sam cannot scare Sue

The bad news will scare him

Derivation:

scare (a sudden attack of fear)

scarer (an effigy in the shape of a man to frighten birds away from seeds)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Cause to lose courage

Example:

dashed by the refusal

Synonyms:

dash; daunt; frighten away; frighten off; pall; scare; scare away; scare off

Classified under:

Verbs of feeling

Hypernyms (to "scare" is one way to...):

intimidate (to compel or deter by or as if by threats)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s somebody

Sentence example:

The performance is likely to scare Sue

Derivation:

scare (sudden mass fear and anxiety over anticipated events)

Credits

 Context examples: 

A dream had scarcely approached my ear, when it fled affrighted, scared by a marrow-freezing incident enough.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Yes, we’ve had a scare in this part lately.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He rose, and the two long lines of brothers followed his example, looking sideways with scared faces at the angry prelate.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The scared look faded from her eyes, and her agitated features smoothed into their usual commonplace.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He had always laughed at what he called my cock-and-bull story about the colonel, but he looked very scared and puzzled now that the same thing had come upon himself.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"Don't you be scared, my bonnie boy," said Lord John, patting the matted head in front of him.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

LRIs include but not limited to the skin atrophy, ulceration and non-healing wounds; cystitis, proctosigmoiditis, resulting to fistulas, abscesses, fibrosis and scaring; laryngitis, osteoradionecrosis; central nervous system injury, optic neuropathy.

(Late Radiation Injury, NCI Thesaurus)

It could be nothing but the violence of the wind penetrating through the divisions of the shutters; and she stepped boldly forward, carelessly humming a tune, to assure herself of its being so, peeped courageously behind each curtain, saw nothing on either low window seat to scare her, and on placing a hand against the shutter, felt the strongest conviction of the wind's force.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

The researchers also found that two-year-olds were more likely to exhibit emotional problems – including being worried, unhappy and tearful; scaring easily; or being clingy in new situations – if their parents had been having early postnatal relationship problems.

(Prenatal parental stress linked to behaviour problems in toddlers, University of Cambridge)

Scared and confounded as I was, I could not forbear going on with these reflections, when one of the reapers, approaching within ten yards of the ridge where I lay, made me apprehend that with the next step I should be squashed to death under his foot, or cut in two with his reaping-hook.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)