Word.ws English Dictionary

scared straight

scared straight is the simple past and past participle of scare straight.

Meaning of scare straight

Verb

scare straight (third-person singular simple present scares straight, present participle scaring straight, simple past and past participle scared straight)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To frighten (someone) to such a degree that a significant improvement in behavior results.
    • Indeed, there is a streak of Reaganomics that believes the only way to motivate American workers is to scare them straight with unemployment charts.1982 September 3, Ellen Goodman, “Work ethic remains strong as ever”, in Spokesman-Review, Spokane, USA, retrieved 13 Feb 2013, page 4

Questions about scared straight

What is scared straight the simple past and past participle of?
Scared straight is the simple past and past participle of scare straight.

Words near scared straight in the dictionary

  1. scared someone out of their mind
  2. scared someone out of their wits
  3. scared someone to death
  4. scared spitless
  5. scared stiff
  6. scared straight
  7. scared the daylights out of
  8. scared the hell out of
  9. scared the hoes
  10. scared the life out of
  11. scared the living daylights out of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scared straight (page history and authors); scare straight (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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