Scared

How to spell scared

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce scared

What does scared mean?

1. adjectiveFilled with fear or fright; afraid of something.

Scared in a sentence

• The children felt scared during the thunderstorm.

• He was too scared to admit the mistake to his manager.

Where does scared come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This word grows from the verb 'scare', which English took from the Old Norse skirra, meaning 'to frighten' or 'to drive away', itself related to skjarr, meaning 'shy' or 'timid'. Norse settlers brought the word into northern English during the Viking age, and by the medieval period it had settled into common use as 'skerren' or 'skerre'. The modern form 'scared' is simply the past tense and participle, used as an adjective to describe someone filled with fear. The spelling preserves the silent 'e' of 'scare' before the -ed ending, which is why people sometimes drop it by mistake and write 'scarred', a quite different word meaning marked by a scar. The shared origin with 'shy' is a useful reminder that the core idea was always shrinking back from something alarming.

How the word is built

• scare (from Old Norse skirra: to frighten)
• -ed (past tense/adjective suffix)