Word.ws English Dictionary

effray

effray verb: to frighten, startle.

Verb

effray (third-person singular simple present effrays, present participle effraying, simple past and past participle effrayed)

  1. (obsolete) To frighten, startle.
    • Their dam vpstart, out of her den effraide, / And rushed forth […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

Forms of effray

third-person singular presenteffrays
present participleeffraying
past participleeffrayed
pasteffrayed

Origin of effray

From Middle French effrayer.

Words formed from effray

Questions about effray

What does effray mean?
Effray means to frighten, startle.
What part of speech is effray?
Effray is a verb.
What is the past tense of effray?
The past tense of effray is effrayed.

Words near effray in the dictionary

  1. effranchised
  2. effranchisement
  3. effranchisements
  4. effranchises
  5. effranchising
  6. effray
  7. effrayable
  8. effrayed
  9. effraying
  10. effrays
  11. Effraz

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: effray (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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