scare
Pronunciation Etymology 1
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Pronunciation Etymology 1
From Middle English sker, skere, from the verb Middle English skerren (see below).
Nounscare (plural scares)
- A minor fright.
- Johnny had a bad scare last night.
- A cause of slight terror; something that inspires fear or dread.
- a food-poisoning scare
- A device or object used to frighten.
From Middle English scaren, skaren, scarren, skeren, skerren, from Old Norse skirra, from Proto-Germanic *skirzijaną, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker-.
Verbscare (scares, present participle scaring; simple past and past participle scared)
- To frighten, terrify, startle, especially in a minor way.
- Did it scare you when I said "Boo!"?
- c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC ↗, [Act III, scene i], lines 6-7:
- That cannot be; the noise of thy crossbow / Will scare the herd, and so my shoot is lost.
- 1995, The Langoliers:
- (Laurel Stevenson) Would you please be quiet? You're scaring the little girl.
(Craig Toomey) Scaring the little girl?! Scaring the little girl?! Lady!''
- frighten
- terrify
- See also Thesaurus:frighten
- French: effrayer
- German: erschrecken, beängstigen, ängstigen
- Italian: spaventare, impaurire, spaurire
- Portuguese: assustar
- Russian: пуга́ть
- Spanish: asustar, atemorizar, espantar
scare
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.005
