scare quotes

American  

plural noun

1. a pair of quotation marks used around a term or phrase to indicate that the writer does not think it is being used appropriately or that the writer is using it in a specialized sense.

   a “huge breakthrough” in the negotiations.

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scare quotes British  

plural noun

1. quotation marks placed around a word or phrase to indicate that it should not be taken literally or automatically accepted as true

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Etymology

Origin of scare quotes

First recorded in 1955–60

Example Sentences

Note those scare quotes, for there’s nothing especially normal about Leda, a woman who tartly rejects any prescriptive model of what a woman should be.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 16, 2021

As you can probably tell from the unnecessary scare quotes in the previous sentence, I don’t like it.

From The Verge • Oct. 13, 2021

Beethoven, in and out of scare quotes, has become a godlike abstraction of himself, complete with one-word moniker — his music less a product of culture than a feature of nature.

From Washington Post • Dec. 23, 2020

These are not words that go in scare quotes.

From Slate • Nov. 3, 2020

Notice the scare quotes; Snowden is instinctively careful about entering anything about himself into the permanent record of “Permanent Record.”

From New York Times • Sep. 13, 2019