Microfear

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A small amount of fear. informal, neologism, uncountable, usually

    "And he told The New York Times that when he recently looked over Katie Couric's 2007 60 Minutes interview with Yankee infielder Alex Rodriguez, in which he denies using performance-enhancing drugs, Ekman spotted a hint of "microfear" around Rodriguez's lips when Couric asked if he was ever tempted to use illegal drugs."

Example

More examples

"And he told The New York Times that when he recently looked over Katie Couric's 2007 60 Minutes interview with Yankee infielder Alex Rodriguez, in which he denies using performance-enhancing drugs, Ekman spotted a hint of "microfear" around Rodriguez's lips when Couric asked if he was ever tempted to use illegal drugs."

Etymology

From micro- + fear.

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