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.
“When there’s something hair-raising on the screen, you can come up with some pretty hair-raising sounds.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026
"A particularly hair-raising moment was when my cofounders asked, 'If you have control, what happens when you die?' He said something like '...maybe it should pass to my children.'"
From BBC ● May 12, 2026
The quiet was hair-raising in its own way.
From Salon ● Apr. 25, 2026
For 15 hair-raising minutes, the pilots struggled to evade a half-dozen surface-to-air missiles, spraying countermeasures and executing a series of high-G maneuvers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 26, 2026
In November, after a hair-raising, bumpy bus ride to Shillong, amidst rumors of Chinese occupation and India’s impending defeat, Estha and Rahel were born.
From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy
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.
