Frighten

//ˈfɹaɪ.tən// verb

verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To cause to feel fear; to scare; to cause to feel alarm or fright. transitive

    "Avery puts a sheet over her head, pretending to be a ghost to frighten Emily."

  2. 2
    cause fear in wordnet
  3. 3
    To become scared or alarmed. intransitive

    "In fitting the White Leghorns for exhibition, it must be remembered that they are of nervous disposition and frighten easily."

Synonyms

All synonyms
affrightscareoveraweaffrightagitatealarm

Example

More examples

"I spoke to him kindly so as not to frighten him."

Etymology

From Middle English *frightenen, equivalent to fright + -en.

Related phrases

do someone a frightenfrighten the horsesfrighten the life out of someonefrighten the piss out of

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