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affray

Pronunciation: /əˈfɹeɪ/

The English word “affray” has 6 meanings listed here.

verb

  1. To startle from quiet; to alarm.
  2. To frighten; to scare; to frighten away.

noun

  1. The act of suddenly disturbing anyone; an assault or attack.
  2. A tumultuous assault or quarrel.
  3. The fighting of two or more persons, in a public place, to the terror of others.
  4. Terror.

Etymology

From Middle English affraien (“to terrify, frighten”), borrowed from Anglo-Norman afrayer (“to terrify, disquiet, disturb”) and Old French effreer, esfreer (“to disturb, remove the peace from”) (compare modern French effrayer), from Vulgar Latin *exfridāre. The second part of this is in turn from Frankish *friþu (“security, peace”), from Proto-Germanic *friþuz (“peace”), from *frijōną (“to free;…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.