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.

---

Example Sentences

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 James, George Wharton

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 Benson, Arthur Christopher

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 Twain, Mark

I had slidden down the balusters when I was a boy, and thought nothing of it, but to slide down the balusters in a railway-train is a thing to make one's flesh creep.

From A Tramp Abroad — Volume 05 by Twain, Mark

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

From Somehow Good by De Morgan, William Frend