Word.ws English Dictionary

make someone's hair stand on end

make someone's hair stand on end verb: to frighten or scare someone.

Verb

make someone's hair stand on end (third-person singular simple present makes someone's hair stand on end, present participle making someone's hair stand on end, simple past and past participle made someone's hair stand on end)

  1. (informal) To frighten or scare someone.
    • That scene in the movie where the killer is stalking his victim made my hair stand on end.
    • A commentator in the tabloid Bild said seeing signs like “Harald’s Eck” (“Harald’s Corner”) made his “hair stand on end”, and that the proper use of the genitive form would be bemoaned by lovers of the German language.2024 October 7, Philip Oltermann, “Germans decry influence of English as ‘idiot’s apostrophe’ gets official approval”, in The Guardian

Forms of make someone's hair stand on end

third-person singular presentmakes someone's hair stand on end
present participlemaking someone's hair stand on end
past participlemade someone's hair stand on end
pastmade someone's hair stand on end

Questions about make someone's hair stand on end

What does make someone's hair stand on end mean?
Make someone's hair stand on end means to frighten or scare someone.
What part of speech is make someone's hair stand on end?
Make someone's hair stand on end is a verb.
What is the past tense of make someone's hair stand on end?
The past tense of make someone's hair stand on end is made someone's hair stand on end.

Words near make someone's hair stand on end in the dictionary

  1. make someone's day
  2. make someone's ears sad
  3. make someone's flesh crawl
  4. make someone's flesh creep
  5. make someone's hair curl
  6. make someone's hair stand on end
  7. make someone's head spin
  8. make someone's jaw drop
  9. make someone's skin crawl
  10. make someone's skin creep
  11. make someone's teeth itch

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: make someone's hair stand on end (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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