hair-raising
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of hair-raising
First recorded in 1895–1900
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The quiet was hair-raising in its own way.
From Salon • Apr. 25, 2026
“Mother Mary” is as hair-raising as it is eyebrow-raising, all spectral senselessness until, out of nowhere, the eeriness gives way to a startling profundity as the film explores remorse with biblical repercussions.
From Salon • Apr. 24, 2026
Instead, he delivers his hair-raising message—that we’re staring at “a humiliating and bloody defeat” if we go to war with China—in a jaunty, clever and sometimes breathless book.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 16, 2026
“Over the course of marrying and building a life and the hair-raising things we went through, Vinnie and I essentially endured a kind of war together,” says Palmer.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 16, 2025
Out of consideration for everyone who had tried to spare her this additional suffering, she said nothing that would indicate she knew about the hair-raising affair of the lost head.
From "The House of the Spirits: A Novel" by Isabel Allende
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
