Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use frightful in a sentence

19 example sentences · adjective, adverb

Frightful means afraid, frightened. Example: “You had a lot of frightful good quotes.”

Examples of frightful by meaning

adverbFrightfully; very.

  • You had a lot of frightful good quotes.1926, Charles Edward Montague, Rough Justice, page 87
  • It's a frightful long time, and I don't get many letters from him.1942, Philip Gibbs, The Long Alert, page 200
  • But we ain't found a soul what knows you, honey-love, I am so frightful sorry to say.2018, Abbie Williams, Way Back

More sentences with frightful

  • This frightful and empty sensation of feeling maladapted to your surroundings is known as monachopsis.2022, William Nippard, I Hate My Job: The Cure For The 9- 5 Syndrome, page 283. From the entry monachopsis
  • These are not Sherlock Holmes whodunits, but rather satisfyingly frightful reads.2012, Becky Siegel Spratford, The Readers' Advisory Guide to Horror, page 51. From the entry creepfest
  • It was a time of transition, replete with astounding errors and the most frightful misachievements.1962, Gerhard Szczesny, The Future of Unbelief, page 19. From the entry misachievement
  • I stopped the first and the others spilled round him at a frightful speed.1949, Walter Dalrymple Maitland Bell, Karamojo safari, page 85. From the entry like a train
  • Have you seen Trimmer in that frightful frock like a canary lampshade?1935, Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night. From the entry subfusc
  • It is a frightful myth that the love of beauty is only to be found in leisured, educated people.2014 March 28, Robin Lane Fox, “The rich heritage of British working-class gardens”, in Financial Times. From the entry leisured
  • No one was to be spared in this frightful slaughter.2003, Theresa Deane, 500 Days of Front Line Combat: The WWII Memoir of Ralph B. Schaps, →ISBN. From the entry mincemeat
  • The wounds inflicted upon the Government men were frightful; practically every man on the Government side who was killed had been shot with dum-dums.1915, Philip J. Sampson, Capture of De Wet: The South African Rebellion, 1914, E. Arnold, page 188. From the entry dumdum
  • No ordinary man could have escaped those frightful claws when Numa sprang from so short a distance, but Tarzan was no ordinary man.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 80. From the entry exigency
  • He had once been one of the dreaded affreux, the “frightful ones,” the white freelance soldiers who helped keep dictators in power throughout Africa and Asia.2014, Joseph Finder, The Zero Hour, →ISBN. From the entry affreux
  • Speaking of frightful words, a curious fear I've suffered from on occasion, especially on long airplane flights, is abibliophobia, the fear of not having enough to read.2010, Phil Cousineau, Wordcatcher: An Odyssey into the World of Weird and Wonderful Words, Viva Editions, →ISBN, page 17. From the entry abibliophobia
  • He appeared, a "monster of so frightful mien", with noise making apparatus which produced such a terrifying din that even the hardiest demon was likely to flee.1940, Rosetta E. Clarkson, Green Enchantments: The Magic Spell of Gardens, The Macmillan Company, page 254. From the entry flee
  • The purpose of my visit, and the frightful abnormalities it postulated struck at me all at once with a chill sensation that nearly over-balanced my ardour for strange delvings.1931, H. P. Lovecraft, chapter 6, in The Whisperer in Darkness. From the entry ardour
  • For one frightful moment there was no sound; even the men's breathing was hushed, and they sat slack-jawed, stunned, half-minded to believe this some hideous, incredible jest.1911, Rex Ellingwood Beach, chapter 26, in The Ne'er-Do-Well. From the entry slack-jawed
  • "I c-can't he'p myse'f," stammered Celia; "you say such frightful things to me—you tell me that they happen in my own house—in her own room—How can I be calm?1910, Robert W. Chambers, Ailsa Paige. From the entry daid
  • There are frightful energies beneath that adamantine surface—energies which have been confined by a rude, imperfectly organized system of force; a chain-work of abuses roughly welded together as occasion required.1904, Mary Platt Parmele, chapter 26, in A Short History of Russia, page 243. From the entry chainwork

Meaning of frightful

  1. adjective Afraid, frightened.
  2. adjective Timid, fearful, easily frightened.
  3. adjective Genuinely horrific, awful, or alarming.

Full definition of frightful

Questions about frightful in a sentence

How do you use frightful in a sentence?
Frightful is used as an adjective and adverb. For example: “You had a lot of frightful good quotes.”
What is a short sentence with frightful?
“You had a lot of frightful good quotes.”
What does frightful mean?
Frightful means afraid, frightened.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: frightful (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.

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