Word.ws English Dictionary

scare the daylights out of

scare the daylights out of is the alternative form of scare the living daylights out of.

Meaning of scare the living daylights out of

Verb

scare the living daylights out of (third-person singular simple present scares the living daylights out of, present participle scaring the living daylights out of, simple past and past participle scared the living daylights out of)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To scare something or someone to a large degree.
    • Hi I am Kathryn Ann. I am a 47-year-old construction worker, I am married and have been for 28 years. I am also a cross dresser and have been as long as I can remember. I have never been out of the closet, but now the need to express myself is very strong! But scares the daylights out of me. I have...1999 March, Rachael, “Dear Rachael 3/99”, in TransGender Forum (offline archive), archived from the original on 25 Oct 2023
    Synonyms:
    scare to death

Forms of scare the daylights out of

third-person singular presentscares the daylights out of
present participlescaring the daylights out of
past participlescared the daylights out of
pastscared the daylights out of

Questions about scare the daylights out of

What is scare the daylights out of the alternative form of?
Scare the daylights out of is the alternative form of scare the living daylights out of.

Words near scare the daylights out of in the dictionary

  1. scare story
  2. scare straight
  3. scare tactic
  4. scare tactics
  5. scare the bejeebers out of
  6. scare the daylights out of
  7. scare the hell out of
  8. scare the hoes
  9. scare the horses
  10. scare the life out of
  11. scare the living daylights out of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scare the daylights out of (page history and authors); scare the living daylights out of (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: “scare the daylights out of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scare_the_daylights_out_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.