Scariest

How to spell scariest

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce scariest

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does scariest mean?

1. adjectiveMost frightening; causing the greatest fear or unease of a group.

Scariest in a sentence

• That was the scariest film the cinema had shown all season.

• The scariest part of the job interview was waiting outside the room.

Where does scariest come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is the superlative form of the adjective 'scary', which itself was built on the verb 'scare'. 'Scare' goes back to the Old Norse word 'skirra', meaning 'to frighten' or 'to drive away in fear', which Norse-speaking settlers brought to England well over a thousand years ago. By the 1500s English had turned the verb into the adjective 'scary', simply meaning 'causing fright', and the regular comparative and superlative endings (-er and -est) followed. The spelling trap lives in the ending: because 'scary' finishes in a consonant plus 'y', that 'y' flips to 'i' before '-est', giving 'scariest' rather than 'scaryest'. The same Old Norse root also lies behind the related word 'scared', and the 'sc' beginning is a steady English spelling of the /sk/ sound here.

How the word is built

• scar(e) (from skirra: to frighten)
• -i- (from -y adjective, y changed to i)
• -est (superlative suffix)