Word.ws English Dictionary

scare the living daylights out of

scare the living daylights out of verb: to scare something or someone to a large degree.

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

Synonyms of scare the living daylights out of

  • scare to death

Forms of scare the living daylights out of

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

Questions about scare the living daylights out of

What does scare the living daylights out of mean?
Scare the living daylights out of means to scare something or someone to a large degree.
What part of speech is scare the living daylights out of?
Scare the living daylights out of is a verb.
What is the past tense of scare the living daylights out of?
The past tense of scare the living daylights out of is scared the living daylights out of.

Words near scare the living daylights out of in the dictionary

  1. scare the daylights out of
  2. scare the hell out of
  3. scare the hoes
  4. scare the horses
  5. scare the life out of
  6. scare the living daylights out of
  7. scare the pants off
  8. scare the shit out of
  9. scare up
  10. scare-babe
  11. scare-babes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-scare the living daylights out of.ogg.

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