scary
Americanadjective
-
scarier,
comparative
-
scariest
superlative
-
causing fright or alarm.
-
easily frightened; timid.
adjective
-
causing fear or alarm; frightening
-
easily roused to fear; timid
Other Word Forms
Adjective Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of scary
Explanation
If something is scary, it makes you afraid, or scared. Horror films — scary movies — are a very popular genre. Apparently people like to be frightened. Scary is more a more casual way to say "frightening," and you can also use it to describe something that's just bizarre or odd or exceptional: you've become such a good golfer, it's scary; or, you cleaned up you room so fast, it's scary. Note that there is no "e" in scary, even though the verb to scare ends in one.
Vocabulary lists containing scary
Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -y
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"Leapin' Lizards! Is That a Real Dragon?"
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Unit 18, Lesson 1
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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.
See Examples For:
“I’d like to play a scary guy,” Innanen says.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 31, 2026
It’s scary it didn’t and that instead he went in this direction.
From Slate ● Aug. 31, 2026
"It's scary," she says, "because I don't want to have to rely on them for the rest of my life."
From BBC ● Aug. 23, 2026
But “there’s some really scary stuff that goes on in your 70s,” he said.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 23, 2026
He wondered if dragons were really that terrible, or if people just said bad things about them because they looked so scary.
From "Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher" by Bruce Coville
Did anything else happen today that is extremely relevant to this topic but in a much scarier way?
From Slate ● Aug. 4, 2026
Of course, a skeptic is going to tell these Knicks that their opponents have been lousy, and what’s coming—the winner of a tense Western Conference Final between San Antonio and Oklahoma City—is far scarier.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 26, 2026
On the scarier side, Wright says there's another place we can already see the combination of robotics and agentic AI: battlefield drones.
From BBC ● Apr. 7, 2026
How do you make a film scary when every waking day is scarier?
From Salon ● Mar. 29, 2026
Every spot of turbulence was scarier than a Greek monster.
From "The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan
Anastasiia has lived through years of war - but Wednesday was her "scariest night" since the start of Russia's full-scale war on Ukraine in February 2022, she says.
From BBC ● Aug. 5, 2026
"And the scariest thing is for the children. My children are just very afraid."
From Barron's ● Jul. 9, 2026
For any other professional golfer, the scariest part about Scheffler and McIlroy is how they can outpace the competition even when they’re playing below form.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 13, 2026
Without my boyfriend’s paycheck buffering our vibes-based accounting, it was time to face the scariest part of managing your money: the spending audit.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 31, 2026
The scariest thing of all is never knowing what you’re suddenly going to believe.
From "Challenger Deep" by Neal Shusterman
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.
