Fearthought
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Excessive and unhealthy apprehensiveness; unnecessary fearfulness. uncountable
"To assist in the analysis of fear, and in the denunciation of its expressions, I have coined the word fearthought to stand for the unprofitable element of forethought, and have defined the word 'worry' as fearthought in contradistinction to forethought. I have also defined fearthought as the self-imposed or self-permitted suggestion of inferiority, in order to place it where it really belongs, in the category of harmful, unnecessary, and therefore not respectable things."
Example
More examples"To assist in the analysis of fear, and in the denunciation of its expressions, I have coined the word fearthought to stand for the unprofitable element of forethought, and have defined the word 'worry' as fearthought in contradistinction to forethought. I have also defined fearthought as the self-imposed or self-permitted suggestion of inferiority, in order to place it where it really belongs, in the category of harmful, unnecessary, and therefore not respectable things."
Etymology
Blend of fear + forethought. Coined by Horace Fletcher as part of New Thought Movement at the turn of the twentieth century.
More for "fearthought"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.