scare
Americanverb (used with object)
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scares,
present (3rd person singular)
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scared,
past participle, past
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scaring
present participle
verb (used without object)
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scares,
present (3rd person singular)
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scared,
past participle, past
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scaring
present participle
noun
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scares
plural
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a sudden fright or alarm, especially with little or no reason.
I recently had a scare when my computer seemed to be malfunctioning, but it turned out to be nothing.
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a time or condition of alarm or worry.
During the anthrax scare, people were leery of opening envelopes from addresses they didn't recognize.
verb phrase
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scare away / off to frighten or alarm someone or something so much that they go away and stay away.
Business leaders felt the fuel tax would scare away consumers fearing higher electricity bills and rising gasoline costs.
The bee's sting isn't necessarily deadly, but it's painful enough to scare off predators.
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scare up to obtain with effort; find or gather.
We want to renovate the kitchen, but first we'll need to scare up some money.
verb
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to fill or be filled with fear or alarm
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(tr; often foll by away or off) to drive (away) by frightening
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informal (tr) (foll by up)
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to produce (a meal) quickly from whatever is available
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to manage to find (something) quickly or with difficulty
brewers need to scare up more sales
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noun
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a sudden attack of fear or alarm
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a period of general fear or alarm
adjective
Synonym Usage
See frighten.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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scaresimple
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scaressimple
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have scaredperfect
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has scaredperfect
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am scaringprogressive
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are scaringprogressive
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is scaringprogressive
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have been scaringperfect progressive
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has been scaringperfect progressive
Past
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scaredsimple
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had scaredperfect
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was scaringprogressive
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were scaringprogressive
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had been scaringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of scare
First recorded in 1150–1200; (for the verb) Middle English skerren, from Old Norse skirra “to frighten,” derivative of skjarr “timid, shy”; (for the noun) late Middle English skere, derivative of the verb
Explanation
Scare is a verb that means frighten or intimidate. You might be embarrassed to admit that you don't want to go to the beach with your friends because of how much seagulls scare you. Questions on a test you're unprepared for might scare you, and so might a barking dog. To scare is to spook, startle, or cause fear, and what scares your best friend most (like losing his job) might not be what would scare you more than anything (like discovering a huge snake in your shower). You can also use scare as a noun, as in "It gave me such a scare when all my friends jumped out and yelled, 'Surprise!'"
Vocabulary lists containing scare
Terrify
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Terrify
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Terrify
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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:
Werro survived an almighty scare on Thursday when she suffered a nasty fall in her semi-final, before later being reinstated in the competition.
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026
Local business owners worry the traffic will scare off brown bears.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026
That comes from finding common ground, not from scare ads and nasty attacks.
From Salon ● Aug. 10, 2026
Perez claimed that he’d changed dramatically since the health scare.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 7, 2026
We made enough racket to scare the hoot owls out of the bottoms, but we sure didn’t stir up any monkeys.
From "Summer of the Monkeys" by Wilson Rawls
To be clear, that example about ambulances scares me, too.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 7, 2026
Horror fans waiting for jump scares will be thwarted.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026
“The scares are not good for everybody else, but sometimes they can really drive business for us,” Cook said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 2, 2026
He has also survived health scares, notably a fall in his bathroom in 2024 that caused a brain bleed.
From Barron's ● Aug. 2, 2026
“Phew. There are a lot of pictures in your books, including one of a polar bear. It scares me to consider what might have gone missing.”
From "The Very, Very Far North" by Dan Bar-el
“People get scared of the sway, the wobble. If you’ve had a fall before, you get a fear of falling again and you stiffen up, you become protective,” Swanson says.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026
But if this in any way can wake people up, can help people continue to ask questions and really question their own environments, that was something that I wasn’t scared of.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026
"It's so cold it feels like the city is actively trying to unalive my motivation… I'm not scared, I promise."
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026
Now, after disabling about 30 of the devices near his home in the Minneapolis area, he told AFP: "I'm not really as scared anymore."
From Barron's ● Aug. 9, 2026
The old me would’ve been too scared to say anything about Dad.
From "Red Flags and Butterflies" by Sheryl Azzam
Fuel shortages and economic turmoil are scaring away foreign visitors.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 6, 2026
A series of military exercises taking place in empty buildings across the Southland are scaring residents and rattling neighbors as the sound of gunfire rings out in the dark and troops descend from helicopters.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 6, 2026
“Higher mortgage rates are scaring off some buyers, but that’s opening the door for others,” Chen Zhao, Redfin’s head of economics research, said in a statement.
From Barron's ● May 26, 2026
StepChange said this was counterproductive, scaring people who can't, rather than won't, pay.
From BBC ● Mar. 22, 2026
“I told you there was no reason to go hunting him down and probably scaring the life out of him.”
From "Boy 2.0" by Tracey Baptiste
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.
