scary

comparative scarier · superlative scariest · alternative scarey

1. informalCausing fear or anxiety

   The tiger's jaws were scary.

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   She was hiding behind her pillow during the scary parts of the film.

   He watched Conjuring but it was too scary for him.

   Well, we swarmed along down the river road, just carrying on like wildcats; and to make it more scary the sky was darking up, and the lightning beginning to wink and flitter, and the wind to shiver amongst the leaves.

   1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter 29, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC

   “[…] How scary it is to know that everyone I love depends on me! I’m afraid I’ll do something wrong.”

   1982, Anne Tyler, chapter 2, in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, New York: Ivy Books, published 1992, page 70

   Age notwithstanding, none of these men seem interested in sailing to Byzantium anyway: Justine’s got them all on the last stage to someplace wilder and scarier, where Yeats’s “monuments of unaging intellect” are thoroughly beside the point.

   2007 February 9, Terrence Rafferty, “Technicolor Dreamboat”, in The New York Times

   Synonyms: frightening, hair-raising, petrifying, terrifying, affreux, alarming, spine-tingling, appalling

2. informalUncannily striking or surprising.

   Linda changed her hair, and it’s scary how much she looks like her mother.

3. UScolloquialSubject to sudden alarm; easily frightened.

   The two brothers stood over the dead rat […]. “Please, Bigger, take ’im out,” Vera begged. “Aw, don’t be so scary,” Buddy said.

   1940, Richard Wright, Native Son, book 1, London: Jonathan Cape, published 1970, page 10

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   “Whist! whist!” said Natty, in a low voice, on hearing a slight sound made by Elizabeth, in bending over the side of the canoe, in eager curiosity; “’tis a sceary animal, and it’s a far stroke for a spear. […]”

   1823, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 5, in The Pioneers, volume 2, New York: Charles Wiley, the UK edition of the same year has scary (p. 262), page 77

   “She’s cursed,” said the skipper; “speak her fair: I’m scary always to see her shake Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair, And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake.”

   1867, John Greenleaf Whittier, The Tent on the Beach, and Other Poems, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, The Wreck of Rivermouth, page 25

   And let us say to these interests that, until the Buy-It-Made-In-Texas movement co-operates with the farmers, we are going to be a little scary of the snare.

   1916, Texas Department of Agriculture, “Bulletin”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), numbers 47-57, page 150

   Synonyms: nervous, jumpy

alternative scarey

1. informalnot comparableTo a scary extent; scarily.

   [T]he main reason I don't want to give her a GA is she's so scary fat!

   2020, S. Clarence Dodge, Beyond Blood: Inside the Mind of an Anesthesiologist, Xlibris Corporation

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   At 199 centimetres and a hundred kilos going up, he was scary big and he found work as a bouncer and enforcer[.]

   2010, Peter Corris, Torn Apart, Allen and Unwin, page 117

alternative scarey

1. Barren land having only a thin coat of grass.