Word.ws English Dictionary

scares straight

scares straight is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 scares straight

What is scares straight the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Scares straight is the third-person singular simple present indicative of scare straight.

Words near scares straight in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scares 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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