fear
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /fɪə/
ipa: /fɪəɹ/
ipa: /fɪɹ/
note: East Anglia, cheer–chair merger
ipa: /fɛː/
ipa: /fiə/
ipa: /fiɹ/
homophone: fair
homophone: fare (both cheer–chair merger)
rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)
Forms: form: fears
Etymology: From Middle English feer, fere, fer, from Old English fǣr, ġefǣr (“calamity, sudden danger, peril, sudden attack, terrible sight”), from Proto-Germanic *fērō, *fērą (“danger”), from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to go through, carry forth, try”). Cognate with Dutch gevaar (“danger, risk, peril”), German Gefahr (“danger, risk, hazard”), Swedish fara (“danger, risk, peril”), Latin perīculum (“danger, risk, trial”), Albanian frikë (“fear, danger”), Romanian frică. Doublet of peril.
The verb is from Middle English feren, from Old English fǣran (“to frighten, raven”), from the noun. Cognate with the archaic Dutch verb varen (“to fear; to cause fear”).
Senses: examples: text: He was struck by fear on seeing the snake.
text: I corralled the judge, and we started off across the fields, in no very mild state of fear of that gentleman's wife, whose vigilance was seldom relaxed.
ref: 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
text: Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear.
ref: 1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter III (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 1:
text: ‘Then the father has a great fight with his terrible conscience,’ said Munday with granite seriousness. ‘Should he make a row with the police[…]? Or should he say nothing about it and condone brutality for fear of appearing in the newspapers?’
ref: 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 18, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
glosses: A strong, unpleasant emotion or feeling caused by actual or perceived danger or threat.
examples: text: Not everybody has the same fears. I have a fear of ants.
text: Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes. The clear light of the bright autumn morning had no terrors for youth and health like hers.
ref: 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
glosses: A phobia, a sense of fear induced by something or someone.
examples: text: The feare of the Lord is the beginning of wisedome.
ref: 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalm CXI:10:
text: That sacred dread of all offence to him, which is called the Fear of God.
ref: 1846, [John Ruskin], Modern Painters […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, part III (Of Ideas of Beauty), section I (Of the Theoretic Faculty), page 121:
synonyms: dread
glosses: Terrified veneration or reverence, particularly towards God, gods, or sovereigns.
examples: text: Her feeling of humiliation had intensified as the day had gone on and her hangover had worsened. She now also had 'the fear' to contend with, […]
ref: 2019, Ruth Kelly, The Little Vineyard in Provence:
text: He had the fear, that feeling of dread that you've done something really embarrassing. The fear was a hundred times worse than the hangover. No, a thousand times worse.
ref: 2020, Mark Ratcliffe, The Step Down: A Very Scottish Crime:
synonyms: hangxiety
qualifier: "the fear"
glosses: A feeling of dread and anxiety when waking after drinking a lot of alcohol, wondering what one did while drunk.
Synonyms: word: fear
word: afraidness
Hypernyms: word: emotion
Hyponyms: word: affright
word: alarm
word: anxiety
word: apprehension
word: awe
word: caution
word: consternation
word: creeps
word: dismay
word: dread
word: foreboding
word: fright
word: heebie-jeebies
word: horror
word: nervousness
word: panic
word: petrification
word: phobia
word: scare
word: scaredness
word: tentativeness
word: terror
word: trepidation
word: uneasiness
word: wariness
word: willies
word: worry
Derived terms: affear
antifear
fear campaign
fearfest
fearful
fear gortha
fearless
fearlike
fearmonger
fear monger
fearnaught
fear of missing out
fearscape
fearsome
fearthought
for fear of
for fear that
geometry of fear
have no fear of ice cold beer
microfear
night-fear
nightfear
night fear
no fear
overfear
put the fear of God into
rub the fear of God into
snake fear
stage fear
strike fear
technofear
textbook fear
unfear
water fear
water-fear
without fear or favour
Related terms: word: have one's heart in one's boots
word: intimidation
word: one's heart in one's mouth
word: one's heart in one's throat
word: sinking feeling
word: terrorism
word: afraid
word: cowardly
word: shy