make one's flesh creep

Idioms  

1. Also, make one's skin crawl. Cause one to shudder with disgust or fear, as in That picture makes my flesh creep, or Cockroaches make my skin crawl. This idiom alludes to the feeling of having something crawl over one's body or skin. The first term appeared in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1727): “Something in their countenance made my flesh creep with a horror I cannot express.” The variant dates from the late 1800s.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

make one's flesh creep

With them were men who played upon strange instruments which made uncanny noises of a sort to make one's flesh creep.

From Following the Equator, Part 5 by Mark Twain

There was no well-defined trail, and the slope was steep enough to make one's flesh creep.

From The Grand Canyon of Arizona; how to see it by George Wharton James

The mere mention of the place was enough to make one’s flesh creep.

From Parkhurst Boys And Other Stories of School Life by Talbot Baines Reed

Doesn't it make one's flesh creep to have a mother like that?

From Somehow Good by William Frend De Morgan

But that," I said, "would be too horrible for anything—to turn the terrors of death into a sort of conjuring trick—a dramatic entertainment, to make one's flesh creep!

From The Child of the Dawn by Arthur Christopher Benson