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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

fearful.

Frightening; causing fear.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈfɪəfəl/Received-Pronunciation/ˈfɪəfʊl/Received-Pronunciation/ˈfɪːfəl/British, Southern, Standard/ˈfɪjəfəl/British, Southern, Standard

  1. Frightening; causing fear.

  2. Tending to fear; timid.

    a fearful boy

  3. Terrible; shockingly bad.

    dated

  4. Frightened; filled with terror.

    archaic
Where this word comes from

From Middle English ferful, fervol, equivalent to fear + -ful.

adv/ˈfɪəfəl/Received-Pronunciation/ˈfɪəfʊl/Received-Pronunciation/ˈfɪːfəl/British, Southern, Standard/ˈfɪjəfəl/British, Southern, Standard

  1. Extremely; fearfully.

    dialectal
Where this word comes from

From Middle English ferful, fervol, equivalent to fear + -ful.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.