Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use frightening in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective

Frightening means causing fear; or capable of causing fear; scary. Example: “Riding the rollercoaster was a frightening experience.”

Examples of frightening by meaning

adjectiveCausing fear; or capable of causing fear; scary.

  • Riding the rollercoaster was a frightening experience.

More sentences with frightening

  • His ideas were both frightening and crazy.From the entry crazy
  • He feared her device more than his for what was more frightening than an uncertain future?2023 October 31, Garrett Boatman, The Clocks of Midnight, Crossroad Press. From the entry scry
  • A comforting anchor, Samuel was a contradiction to the frightening events portrayed.2017, Daniel I. Russell, Entertaining Demons. From the entry spectrology
  • Cambridge Attorney Harvey Silverglate has thoroughly documented this federal over-criminalization, and his conclusions are frightening.January 2014, The Felonization of America Right on Crime. From the entry felonization
  • There was little that could be done to make Diablo appear less frightening.2013, Allison Leotta, chapter 49, in Speak of the Devil, New York: Pocket Books, published 2015, →ISBN, page 351. From the entry Voldemortish
  • One rather frightening place those cars and bridges can reach is the Ghost City of Ordos.2012, Steve Cortés, Against the Herd, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 14. From the entry ordos
  • She needn't worry that Lydia seems to be taking too many and more frightening drugs.2011, Mary Gordon, The Love of My Youth, New York, N.Y.: Pantheon Books, →ISBN, page 195. From the entry needn't
  • Seen in the right light, and at an unexpected moment, they might have proved bed-wettingly frightening.2009, John Connolly, “In Which We Learn That One Should Be Careful About Accepting Anything That Is Offered For Nothing”, in The Gates: A…. From the entry bed-wettingly
  • A lot of people say that winter swimming in lakes is frightening or freezing.2006 February 12, Alice Yan, “More hardy souls warm to winter swimming”, in South China Morning Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the…. From the entry Shichahai
  • A man there was, grim his expression, just like a Thunderbird his features were frightening.1999, Andrew George, transl., Gilgamesh, section VII. From the entry thunderbird
  • German designs were by contrast sharp-edged, declarative and frightening: statements of the supremacy of the Aryan race.1999, Paul Leonard, “Special Weapons”, in Stephen Cole, editor, More Short Trips: A Collection of Short Stories (Short Trips), London: BBC…. From the entry mamma's boy
  • 'It was very frightening,' said Georgean Stewart, 39, a nurse from Scotland.1999 May 21, Sarah Hall, “Holiday cruisers sing as ship sinks”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media…. From the entry Georgean
  • When one person tells another of a frightening experience, he is passing on ghostlore.1995, Charles Edwin Price, Haunted Tennessee. From the entry ghostlore
  • THE SPIKE is the acclaimed bestselling superthriller of today-but it may be the frightening reality of tomorrow.1981, Arnaud De Borchgrave, Robert Moss, The Spike. From the entry superthriller
  • I must say Humphrey, these facts are a frightening indictment of bureaucratic sloppiness and self-indulgence.1980 March 10, Antony Jay, Jonathan Lynn, “The Economy Drive”, in Yes, Minister, season 1, episode 3, spoken by Jim Hacker (Paul Eddington). From the entry indictment
  • The man’s big laugh and the tippiness of the canoe were even more frightening than the ladder.1941, Emily Carr, chapter 1, in Klee Wyck. From the entry tippiness
  • The blowback and fear that 4B practitioners experience underscores their conviction that Korea is still a frightening place for women.2023 March 8, Anna Louie Sussman, “The women of South Korea's 4B movement aren't fighting the patriarchy — they're leaving it behind…. From the entry 4B
  • He isn’t angry, bigoted, cruel, demagogic, erratic, frightening or gross.2020 August 17, Bret Stephens, “On Being a Biden Conservative”, in The New York Times. From the entry isn't
  • In The Last Guardian, a kidnapped boy forges an uneasy relationship with a frightening beast in order to survive.2019 May 8, Jon Bailes, “Save yourself! The video games casting us as helpless children”, in The Guardian. From the entry forge
  • It's very frightening for him." Bob whined in agreement.2015, Bruce Coville, The Monsters of Morley Manor: A Madcap Adventure, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN. From the entry werehuman
  • Astonishes me by saying, with all the old force, in his old, frightening growl: “This is a bum's rush!”2013, Chris Crowley, Jennifer Sacheck, Thinner This Year: A Younger Next Year Book. From the entry bum's rush
  • If you find a disco ball at the dance club frightening, you might have Selaphobia, the fear of flashing light.2013 October, Michael Buzzelli, “Oh, don't be such a phobe”, in Equal Magazine. From the entry selaphobia
  • Then I find out that she is not an underperson, but a frightening old dead woman, still walking around alive.2012, Gardner Dozois, A Day in the Life, →ISBN. From the entry underperson
  • The fact that teen girls all over the world will watch this video is frightening, to say the least.2011 February 2, Tashi Singh, “Rihanna S&M (VIDEO): Disturbing and Flagged”, in The Post Chronicle, archived from the original on 29 Oct…. From the entry wall humping
  • Old psychiatric hospitals are even more frightening.2007 April, Julie Albrecht Royce, “Ghosts and Monsters of Lake Michigan—Haunting and Stalking the Sunset Coast”, in Traveling Michigan’s…. From the entry lobotomy
  • Bell too faced stylike quarters and a frightening proprietress.1996, Suzanne L Bunkers, Cynthia Anne Huff, Inscribing the daily: critical essays on women's diaries. From the entry stylike
  • She's been reprimanded once already by the Bujumburan police for frightening people, but apparently it did no good.1981, Jamey Cohen, The Night Chasers, New York: Signet, published 1983, →ISBN, page 50. From the entry Bujumburan
  • Some made the frightening comparison to the "First Wave" of feminism, which dissolved after women achieved the right to vote.1978 December 16, Cnidy Stein, “The Lavender Menace Lives”, in Gay Community News, volume 6, number 21, page 9. From the entry first-wave feminism
  • Kumalo stood shocked at the frightening and desolating words.1948, Alan Paton, chapter 36, in Cry, the Beloved Country, New York: Scribner, page 271. From the entry desolate
  • He burst into the sitting-room, covered with meal and panting like a bellowsed horse, frightening my grandmother almost into hysterics.1944, “The Grist Mill”, in Benjamin A. Botkin, editor, A Treasury of American Folklore, New York: Crown Publishers, page 411. From the entry bellowsed
  • A little twopenny cold frightening him off."1940, Woman's Home Companion, volume 67, numbers 1-4, page 134. From the entry tie
  • Moral panics, accompanied by calls for a return to a simpler age, once greeted the advent of frightening “new technologies” such as telephones and trains.2024 May 21, Matthew Reisz, “Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion by Agnes Arnold-Foster review – the past isn’t a foreign place”…. From the entry moral panic
  • A factory fire broke out in Taichung City’s Wuqi District on Saturday evening (Jan. 6), with plumes of smoke frightening nearby residents.2024 January 7, Sean Scanlan, “Late night factory fire in central Taiwan”, in Taiwan News, archived from the original on 27 Jun 2024. From the entry Wuqi
  • Two more grootslangs appeared on either side of their leader, both larger and more frightening than the one he had made in the museum.2016, Rocco Ryg, The Genocide Gene: The Onryo Saga, →ISBN. From the entry grootslang
  • Which is frightening as James can recite all the books of the Bible, and the periodic table, off by heart, in song.2013, Joanna Nadin, The Rachel Riley Diaries: The Meaning of Life. From the entry boffiny
  • This post examines an element potentially even more frightening—partly because of its nukelike fury, partly because it might be perfectly legal to stockpile this weapon.2010 July 28, Sam Kean, “Hafnium: Building the Doomsday Device of Tomorrow”, in Slate. From the entry nukelike
  • Doak encouraged local immigration officers, law enforcement agencies, and repatriation-sympathetic newspapers to join forces to publicize deportation raids, frightening many Mexicans into self-deportation.2007, Dan Kanstroom, Deportation Nation, →ISBN, page 218. From the entry self-deportation
  • "It's a bit scary if you have a difficult boss, and it's out-and-out frightening if you have a completely nutso, maladjusted, irrational, or disturbed boss."2000, Robert Bacal, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Dealing With Difficult Employees. From the entry nutso
  • At such moments, King was contraposed against the more frightening threat, his symbolism making the radicalism of the other party all the more apparent.1999, Richard Lentz, Symbols, the News Magazines, and Martin Luther King, →ISBN, page 119. From the entry contrapose

Meaning of frightening

  1. adjective Causing fear; or capable of causing fear; scary.
  2. adjective Awful, terrible, very bad.

Full definition of frightening

Questions about frightening in a sentence

How do you use frightening in a sentence?
Frightening is used as an adjective. For example: “Riding the rollercoaster was a frightening experience.”
What is a short sentence with frightening?
“A little twopenny cold frightening him off."”
What does frightening mean?
Frightening means causing fear; or capable of causing fear; scary.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: frightening (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this page: “How to use frightening in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/frightening. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.