Word.ws English Dictionary

fearmongering

fearmongering is the present participle and gerund of fearmonger.

Meaning of fearmonger

Verb

fearmonger (third-person singular simple present fearmongers, present participle fearmongering, simple past and past participle fearmongered)

  1. (intransitive) To spread fear.

See all 2 meanings of fearmonger

Noun

fearmongering (usually uncountable, plural fearmongerings)

  1. (usually) The act of spreading needless fear; exaggerating purported threats in order to incite fear.
    • But the ongoing dip they describe is far more modest than people fearmongering about a T crisis make it out to be, and likely due to lifestyle factors like sedentariness and environmental pollutants messing with our bodies.2023 April 5, Mark Hay, “Does Testosterone Affect Your Politics?”, in VICE
    • Recent polling shows it’s the second most important issue among Americans. But a big reason for that is the relentless, bad-faith fearmongering around the issue by the Republican party themselves, perhaps best summed up by the startling growth this year of the toxic phrase ‘migrant crime’.2024, John Oliver, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 11, episode 17

Synonyms of fearmongering

Forms of fearmongering

pluralfearmongerings

Questions about fearmongering

What does fearmongering mean?
Fearmongering means the act of spreading needless fear; exaggerating purported threats in order to incite fear.
What is fearmongering the present participle and gerund of?
Fearmongering is the present participle and gerund of fearmonger.
What part of speech is fearmongering?
Fearmongering is a noun.
What is the plural of fearmongering?
The plural of fearmongering is fearmongerings.

Words near fearmongering in the dictionary

  1. fearmonged
  2. fearmonger
  3. fearmongered
  4. fearmongerer
  5. fearmongerers
  6. fearmongering
  7. fearmongerings
  8. fearmongers
  9. fearmonging
  10. fearmongs
  11. Fearn

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fearmongering (page history and authors); fearmonger (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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Cite this entry: “fearmongering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fearmongering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.