Scare
adj, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A minor fright.
"Johnny had a bad scare last night."
- 2 a sudden attack of fear wordnet
- 3 A cause of terror or alarm; a panic; something that inspires fear or dread.
"a food-poisoning scare"
- 4 sudden mass fear and anxiety over anticipated events wordnet
- 5 A device or object used to frighten.
"But I admit the possibility of their being used as "scares" for either birds of prey or snakes, or both."
- 1 To frighten, terrify, startle, especially in a minor way. transitive
"Did it scare you when I said "Boo!"?"
- 2 cause fear in wordnet
- 3 (To be able) to be scared. intransitive
"I don't scare easily."
- 4 cause to lose courage; to be daunted; to be scared away wordnet
- 1 lean; scanty
Example
More examples"If I wanted to scare you, I would tell you what I dreamt about a few weeks ago."
Etymology
From Middle English sker, skere (“terror, fright”), from the verb Middle English skerren (“to frighten”) (see below).
From Middle English scaren, skaren, scarren, skeren, skerren, from Old Norse skirra (“to frighten; to shrink away from, shun; to prevent, avert”), from Proto-Germanic *skirzijaną (“to shoo, scare off”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to swing, jump, move”). Related to Old Norse skjarr (“timid, shy, afraid of”). Cognate with Scots skar (“wild, timid, shy”), dialectal Norwegian Nynorsk skjerra, dialectal Swedish skjarra and possibly Old Armenian ցիռ (cʻiṙ, “wild ass”).
Related phrases
More for "scare"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.