Word.ws English Dictionary

scaring straight

scaring straight is the present participle and gerund 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 scaring straight

What is scaring straight the present participle and gerund of?
Scaring straight is the present participle and gerund of scare straight.

Words near scaring straight in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scaring 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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