Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A cause of fear, anxiety, or irritation.
- noun A difficult or persistent problem.
- noun A fearsome imaginary creature, especially one evoked to frighten children.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Something that causes terror; especially, something that causes needless fright or apprehension.
- Occasioning causeless fear: as, “such bugbear thoughts,”
- To alarm with imaginary or idle fears.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Same as
bugaboo . - transitive verb To alarm with idle phantoms.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun An
ongoing problem ; arecurring obstacle oradversity . - noun A source of
dread ;resentment ; orirritation . - noun An imaginary creature meant to inspire fear in children.
- verb transitive To
alarm withidle phantoms .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an imaginary monster used to frighten children
- noun an object of dread or apprehension
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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My personal bugbear is the misspelling of lose/loose. on March 21, 2009 at 11: 06 pm | Reply anonymous
Cross & Rude « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG Inspector Gadget 2009
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My reading bugbear is the use of second person – it turns me off very quickly even when the author has a good justification for using it.
Writer Unboxed » Blog Archive » The same only different 2009
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His only bugbear is likely to be the US policy regarding Israel's and the West's brutal sixty year oppression of the Palestinians – the absolute root cause of all Middle-East terrorism from 9/11 to Iran.
Santorum plans foreign policy speech in key primary state 2010
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My other bugbear is that nobody who knows anything about Renaissance art refers to the guy as Da Vinci.
Dan Brown: How Does He Do It? - by Joanna Penn | The Creative Penn 2009
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My particular bugbear is the supermarket "half-price" special offer – these are no doubt true, technically, but the initial price is generally well above what the wine is actually worth.
Wine: We're not asking for much Fiona Beckett 2010
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It’s twice as powerful as my old one but one bugbear is that the bowl has no handle, what’s up with that??
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Naturally, the bugbear is the whole 'writing for free' thing and whether I should sling my copyrighted content to a successful news organisation and receive exactly nothing in return.
Monty Munford: Retiring From International Football Is as Stupid as Refusing to Write for Free Monty Munford 2011
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Another bugbear is the closed, ivory tower nature of the process.
Archive 2005-10-01 2005
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Another bugbear is the closed, ivory tower nature of the process.
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But the bugbear was her size, and it was close; it knew exactly how to terrify her.
Dragon on a Pedestal Anthony, Piers 1983
sonofgroucho commented on the word bugbear
Odd word, this one...
November 24, 2007