Dictionaries › English

fright

Pronunciation: /fɹaɪt/

The English word “fright” has 4 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A state of terror excited by the sudden appearance of danger; sudden and violent fear, usually of short duration; a sudden alarm.
  2. Someone strange, ugly or shocking, producing a feeling of alarm or aversion.

verb

  1. To frighten.

adjective

  1. frightened; afraid; affright

Etymology

From Middle English fright, furht, from Old English fryhtu, fyrhto (“fright, fear, dread, trembling, horrible sight”), from Proto-Germanic *furhtį̄ (“fear”), from Proto-Indo-European *pr̥k- (“to fear”). Cognate with Scots fricht (“fright”), Old Frisian fruchte (“fright”), Low German frucht (“fright”), Middle Dutch vrucht, German Furcht (“fear, fright”), Danish frygt (“fear”), Swedish fruktan…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “fright” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

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