Word.ws English Dictionary

scare story

scare story noun: a rumour spread by a scaremonger in order to cause anxiety.

Noun

scare story (plural scare stories)

  1. (idiomatic) A rumour spread by a scaremonger in order to cause anxiety.
    • Have you heard the recent scare story about broken glass in baby food?

Forms of scare story

pluralscare stories

Questions about scare story

What does scare story mean?
Scare story means a rumour spread by a scaremonger in order to cause anxiety.
What part of speech is scare story?
Scare story is a noun.
What is the plural of scare story?
The plural of scare story is scare stories.

Words near scare story in the dictionary

  1. scare quotes
  2. scare someone out of their mind
  3. scare someone out of their wits
  4. scare someone to death
  5. scare stories
  6. scare story
  7. scare straight
  8. scare tactic
  9. scare tactics
  10. scare the bejeebers out of
  11. scare the daylights out of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scare story (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-scare story.ogg.

Cite this entry: “scare story.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scare_story. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.