scary
part of speech
adjective (scary, scarier, scariest)
meaning for a pupil
Scary means making you feel afraid or frightened. tree →
sense in the lessons
In stories and films, scary parts include monsters, ghosts and dark places; Halloween is meant to be scary in a fun way. In everyday life, new things like the first day at school or going to the dentist can feel scary, and talking about it helps. In safety, if something online or in real life is scary, tell a trusted adult. «A bit scary» is milder than «terrifying».
examples
- That ghost story was really scary! tree →
- The first day at a new school can be scary. tree →
- The dog looked scary, but it was friendly. tree →
- This is the scariest ride at the fair. tree →
- Thunderstorms can be scary. tree →
- If you see something scary online, tell an adult. tree →
- We watched a scary film on Halloween. tree →
- A chilly little wind came creeping with them making scary noises in the grass. tree →
note
Comparative «scarier», superlative «scariest» (y → i). «Scary» (what frightens) vs «scared» (how you feel): «The film was scary; I was scared.» Spelt «scary», not «scarey». Informal; «frightening» is more formal.
In the corpora
- Parents may switch off the news to protect children from scary pictures, and they worry about it themselves.
- Listening at the door usually gives you only scary half-pieces; asking «Is everything OK?» later works much better.
- Lots of young adults find phone calls to strangers scary; planning what to say first helps, and it gets easier with practice.
- Knowing how money, work and choices really work now makes the big steps much less scary later.
- Checking scary news again and again, especially late at night, keeps the worry going and makes nobody safer.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «scary» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.