frighteningadjective
uk/ˈfraɪ.tən.ɪŋ/us/ˈfraɪ.tən.ɪŋ/B1 making you feel fear:
a frightening thought
a frightening film
It is frightening to think what might happen if she left him.
More examples
- The mask was so lifelike it was quite frightening.
- The deathly pallor of her skin was frightening.
- She found the film extremely frightening.
- The firefighters had a frightening task ahead of them.
- There's a frightening similarity between this incident and one that occurred last year.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Describing things that cause fear
- awesome
- bloodcurdling
- chilling
- creepy
- fearsome
- hair-raising
- hairy
- horrible
- intimidating
- scary
- spine-chilling
- spine-tingling
- spooky
- terrifying
- traumatic
- white-knuckle
frighteningly
adverb uk/ˈfraɪ.tən.ɪŋ.li/us/ˈfraɪ.tən.ɪŋ.li/
She looked frighteningly thin.