Meanings
- uncountableExcessive and unhealthy apprehensiveness; unnecessary fearfulness.
The “misery-habit,” the “martyr-habit,” engendered by the prevalent “fearthought,” get pungent criticism from the mind-cure writers ...
1902, William James, “Lectures 4 & 5”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC1 more example
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.
1897, Horace Fletcher, Happiness as found in Forethought minus Fearthought (Chicago & New York: Stone), pp. 24–25
Origin
Blend of fear + forethought. Coined by Horace Fletcher as part of New Thought Movement at the turn of the twentieth century.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
fearthought. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fearthought
“fearthought.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fearthought. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “fearthought,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fearthought.
Source: fearthought on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.