Fearful

How to spell fearful

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fearful

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fearful mean?

1. adjectiveFeeling or showing fear; afraid or anxious about something.
2. adjectiveCausing fear; terrible, dreadful or alarming in scale or effect.

Fearful in a sentence

• The new staff were fearful of making mistakes on their first day.

• The collision left a fearful mess across both lanes of the motorway.

• She grew fearful as the storm approached the coast.

• The old factory ground to a halt with a fearful grinding noise.

Where does fearful come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word joins the noun 'fear' to the adjective-forming suffix '-ful', meaning 'full of'. The noun comes from the Old English 'fær', which originally meant a sudden calamity or danger rather than the emotion itself; the sense gradually shifted inward from the threat to the feeling the threat produces. The Old English root belongs to a wider Germanic family, and related forms survive in modern German 'Gefahr', meaning 'danger'. The combined form 'fearful' was in use by the medieval period and could mean either 'feeling fear' or 'causing fear', a double sense it still carries today. Because the suffix is '-ful' with a single 'l' (unlike the standalone word 'full'), the ending is the small spelling point worth remembering.

How the word is built

• fear (from Old English fær: sudden danger)
• -ful (full of, characterised by)