Fearsome

//ˈfɪɹsəm// adj

adj ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    frightening, especially in appearance.

    "fearsome reputation"

  2. 2
    fearful, frightened archaic, rare
Adjective
  1. 1
    causing fear or dread or terror wordnet

Example

More examples

"He has a fearsome intellect before which even the most learned cower."

Etymology

From fear + -some. Compare German furchtsam (“fearful”, obsolete also “fearsome”); this is more closely equivalent to English frightsome, however.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.