Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Experiencing fear; frightened.
- adjective Inclined to feel anxiety or apprehension; timid; nervous.
- adjective Indicating anxiety or fear.
- adjective Causing or capable of causing fear; frightening.
- adjective Extreme, as in degree or extent. Used especially of something negative.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Feeling fear, dread, apprehension, or solicitude; afraid.
- Timid; timorous; wanting courage.
- Causing or such as to cause fear; impressing fear; frightful; dreadful; terrible; awful.
- Showing fear; produced by fear; indicative of fear.
- Synonyms Pusillanimous, cowardly, faint-hearted. Dreadful. Frightful, etc. (see
awful ); dire, direful, horrible, distressing, shocking.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Full of fear, apprehension, or alarm; afraid; frightened.
- adjective Inclined to fear; easily frightened; without courage; timid.
- adjective Indicating, or caused by, fear.
- adjective Inspiring fear or awe; exciting apprehension or terror; terrible; frightful; dreadful.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
Frightening . - adjective
Frightened , filled with terror. - adjective
Terrible .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective extremely distressing
- adjective lacking courage; ignobly timid and faint-hearted
- adjective causing fear or dread or terror
- adjective experiencing or showing fear
- adjective timid by nature or revealing timidity
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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I. iii.176 (130,9) [left in the fearful guard] [W: fearless] Dr. Warburton has forgotten that _fearful_ is not only that which fears, but that which is feared or causes fear.
Notes to Shakespeare — Volume 01: Comedies Samuel Johnson 1746
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Her head held high, her expression fearful, she half expected applause.
Come the Spring Julie Garwood 1997
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Her head held high, her expression fearful, she half expected applause.
Come the Spring Julie Garwood 1997
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But, then, two Saturdays before Christmas, 1968, I was one of three little paddyboy white kids from Brooklyn (along with Benjy and Andy, both from the same school, both in fearful awe of Alonzo the way I was, both music-freaks like me) making our way to the Fillmore East and into a sold out crowd of other paddyboy white kids ... musical thrill-seekers all, there to witness The Sam & Dave Review.
Binky Philips: Sam & Dave Take Me to School, 1968 Binky Philips 2010
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Now, now jwest being dumb and fearful is no way to go through life ..
Think Progress » Texas Board of Education cuts Thomas Jefferson out of its textbooks. 2010
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While the behavior of a fearful dog can often be significantly ameliorated by careful training and acclimatization, on other occasions – and sometimes, despite your best efforts – a dog will remain fearful to the end of his days.
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So fearful is its portrayal of social disease, so ruthless its stripping of the painted charms from vice, that its tendency cannot but be strongly for good.
Fomá Gordyéeff 2010
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And their fear-based tactics are much more powerful than ours, because theirs are based largely on claiming that short-term fearful consequences will happen.
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We are disadvantaged by talking about longer-term fearful consequences that are harder to sell when the other side is saying, for example, that Repower America is going to make things worse "tomorrow" by causing good jobs to be lost.
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And their fear-based tactics are much more powerful than ours, because theirs are based largely on claiming that short-term fearful consequences will happen.
rolig commented on the word fearful
Reading Blake's famous poem "The Tyger", with its reference to the animal's "fearful symmetry", I realized (among other things) that "fearful" is a contranym. In Blake's poem, it means "able to stir dread, fear" -- "awesome" in its more traditional meaning -- but of course today it more usually means "feeling fear, being afraid".
October 28, 2015
TankHughes commented on the word fearful
Very true, rolig, it is an autantonym. Fear used to serve the opposite purpose, describing the frightener and not the frightenee in a sentence like "she fears me." I became aware of this from two pairs of cutthroat variants:
scarecrow and fear-crow (a non-living protector of cornfields)
scarebabe and fear-babe (a bogeyman creature who scares children)
October 28, 2015