scary
UK/ˈskɛə.ɹi//ˈskɛə.ɹi/
scary adjective: causing fear or anxiety.
Adjective
scary (comparative scarier, superlative scariest)
- Causing fear or anxiety
- The tiger's jaws were scary.
- She was hiding behind her pillow during the scary parts of the film.
- Synonyms:
- frightening, hair-raising, petrifying, terrifying, affreux, alarming, spine-tingling, appalling, awful, eldritch
- Uncannily striking or surprising.
- Linda changed her hair, and it’s scary how much she looks like her mother.
- Subject to sudden alarm; easily frightened.
- “Whist! whist!” said Natty, in a low voice, on hearing a slight sound made by Elizabeth, in bending over the side of the canoe, in eager curiosity; “’tis a sceary animal, and it’s a far stroke for a spear. […]”1823, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 5, in The Pioneers, volume 2, New York: Charles Wiley, the UK edition of the same year has scary (p. 262), page 77
- “She’s cursed,” said the skipper; “speak her fair:
I’m scary always to see her shake
Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair,
And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake.”1867, John Greenleaf Whittier, The Tent on the Beach, and Other Poems, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, The Wreck of Rivermouth, page 25
Adverb
scary (not comparable)
- To a scary extent; scarily.
- At 199 centimetres and a hundred kilos going up, he was scary big and he found work as a bouncer and enforcer[.]2010, Peter Corris, Torn Apart, Allen and Unwin, page 117
- [T]he main reason I don't want to give her a GA is she's so scary fat!2020, S. Clarence Dodge, Beyond Blood: Inside the Mind of an Anesthesiologist, Xlibris Corporation
Noun
scary
- Barren land having only a thin coat of grass.
scary meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
scary in Hindi
- causing fear or anxiety
- भयानक bhayānak, डरावना ḍarāvnā, भुतहा bhuthā
scary in Tamil
- causing fear or anxiety
- பயங்கரமான payaṅkaramāṉa
scary in Marathi
- causing fear or anxiety
- भितीदायक bhitīdāyak, धडकी भरवणारा dhaḍkī bharavṇārā
scary in Urdu
- scary, horrible, terrifying
- بھیانک bhayānak
- scary
- ڈراؤنا ḍarāvnā
More languagesFewer languages
- scary in Bengali
- ভীতিকর bhitikor
- scary in Telugu
- భయానకంగా bhayānakaṅgā, భయపెట్టాడు bhayapeṭṭāḍu
- scary in Malayalam
- ഭീതിദമാണ് bhītidamāṇŭ, ഭയപ്പെടുത്തുന്ന bhayappeṭuttunna
- scary in Kannada
- ಹೆದರಿಕೆಯೆ hedarikeye
- scary in Punjabi
- ਡਰਾਉਣਾ ḍarāuṇā
- scary in Gujarati
- ડરામણી ḍarāmṇī
- scary in Sanskrit
- भीष्म bhīṣma
- scary in Sinhala
- බය හිතෙන baya hitena
- scary in Nepali
- डरलाग्दो ḍarlāgdo
- scary in Tagalog
- nakatatakot, katakot-takot
- scary in Arabic
- مُجَفِّل mujaffil
- scary in Malay
- menakutkan
- scary in Indonesian
- menakutkan
- scary in Persian
- ترسناک tarsnâk, بیمناک bimnâk
- scary in Thai
- น่ากลัว nâa-gluua
- scary in Vietnamese
- đáng sợ
- scary in Myanmar
- ကြောက်စရာ kraukca.ra
Examples of scary in a sentence
- He watched Conjuring but it was too scary for him.
- “[…] How scary it is to know that everyone I love depends on me!1982, Anne Tyler, chapter 2, in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, New York: Ivy Books, published 1992, page 70:
- And let us say to these interests that, until the Buy-It-Made-In-Texas movement co-operates with the farmers, we are going to be a little scary of the snare.1916, Texas Department of Agriculture, “Bulletin”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), numbers 47-57, page 150:
Synonyms of scary
- frightening
- hair-raising
- petrifying
- terrifying
- affreux
- alarming
- spine-tingling
- appalling
- awful
- eldritch
29 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of scary
| comparative | scarier |
|---|---|
| superlative | scariest |
| alternative form | scarey |
Origin of scary
From scare + -y.
From dialectal English scare (“scraggy”).
Words formed from scary
Words that rhyme with scary
Questions about scary
- What does scary mean?
- Scary means causing fear or anxiety.
- What is scary in Hindi?
- Scary in Hindi is भयानक (bhayānak), डरावना (ḍarāvnā), भुतहा (bhuthā). See Scary meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use scary in a sentence?
- He watched Conjuring but it was too scary for him.
- What part of speech is scary?
- Scary can be an adjective, an adverb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce scary?
- Scary is pronounced /ˈskɛə.ɹi/ (UK).
Words near scary in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: scary (page history and authors); بھیانک (Urdu) (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-us-scary.ogg.
Cite this entry: “scary.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scary. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.