make one's hair stand on end

Idioms  

1. Also, make one's hair curl. Terrify one, as in The very thought of an earthquake makes my hair stand on end, or Diving off a high board is enough to make my hair curl. The first term, first recorded in 1534, alludes to goose pimples prompted by fear, which cause the hairs around them to stand up. The variant dates from the mid-1900s.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

make one's hair stand on end

Today the mox progeniem daturos vitiosiorem would make one's hair stand on end.

From Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time Volume 1 by John William Cole

It seemed as if the ship must break into a thousand pieces, a thing most terrible to see and to hear, and fit to make one's hair stand on end.

From Celebrated Travels and Travellers Part I. The Exploration of the World by Dora Leigh

How often was I not in embarrassments enough to make one's hair stand on end, badly in debt.

From Withered Leaves. Vol. III.(of III) A Novel by Rudolf von Gottschall

It is enough to make one’s hair stand on end, ‘like quills upon the fretted porcupine.’

From Helen and Arthur or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel by Caroline Lee Hentz

We gave nothing, and they commented upon us with a gravity of moral reprobation quite fit to make one's hair stand on end, even with New England versus beggar behind one.

From From the Oak to the Olive A Plain record of a Pleasant Journey by Julia Ward Howe