fright

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English fright, also firht, furht and freiht,^[2][3] inherited from Old English fryhto, a Northumbrian form with metathesis of fyrhtu (“fear, dread”).^{[4][3][5][6][7]} The Old English noun comes from Proto-Germanic *furhtį̄, a noun of state formed on the adjective *furhtaz (“afraid”),^[4][6][8][9] which survives in forht (“afraid”) and Gothic 𐍆𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌷𐍄𐍃 (faurhts, “afraid”).^[4][5][10] The noun is cognate with Gothic 𐍆𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌷𐍄𐌴𐌹 (faurhtei, “fear”),^[4][6][11] while the other West Germanic languages have a related noun: Old Saxon forhta, Old Frisian fruchte, Old High German forhta and German Furcht.^[4][3][12] The verb is inherited from Old English fyrhtan (“to terrify”), Northumbrian fryhta,^[4][3][13] which corresponds to Gothic 𐍆𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌷𐍄𐌾𐌰𐌽 (faurhtjan, “to fear”) and Old High German furihten, modern fürchten.^[4][14][6] Kroonen counts the adjective among the words shared only by Germanic and Tocharian and reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *prk-to-;^[10] Klein, Merriam-Webster and Barnhart compare Tocharian A pärsk- (“to fear”) and Tocharian B prosko (“fear”).^[12][14][5] Hoad knows no cognates outside Germanic,^[6] and Etymonline and Ayto stress that the word is not related to fear.^[3][8] Ayto adds that Middle Low German vruchte had the same metathesis and lent Swedish fruktan and Danish frygt.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Old English the noun meant fear in general:^[4] Barnhart dates Old English fyrhtu to before 830 and the Northumbrian fryhto to about 950.^[5] The sense of sudden fear or terror is first found about 1250, in the “Story of Genesis and Exodus”.^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

Etymonline notes that the Old English noun also covered dread, trembling and a horrible sight, and that fear replaced it in the 13th century as the main word except for sudden terror.^[3][8] The verb meant "to be afraid" in Old English and early Middle English, a sense the OED last records about 1325;^[4] the causative sense "to make afraid", which became the main Middle English meaning, is found only in English among the Germanic languages.^[4][3][7] From 1634 fright could also mean anything that causes terror, and hence, colloquially, a person or thing of grotesque or ridiculous appearance.^[4][13] Johnson (1755) defined the noun as "a sudden terrour" and the verb as "to terrify; to disturb with fear".^[15] The verb frighten, first recorded in 1666 in Pepys's diary, took over from the verb fright in the 17th century,^[5][6] and Weekley notes that it is not in Shakespeare or the Authorized Version.^[7] The older verb is now poetic or dialectal;^[4][13] in English dialects its past tense and participle could be frit, from Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire to Warwickshire, and Scots used fricht and frichtit.^[16] Etymonline traces the spelling with -gh- to the same development as in fight.^[3][5]

Timeline

• before 830 – Old English fyrhtu, fear, dread.^[5]
• c. 950 – the Northumbrian form fryhto.^[5]
• c. 1175 – Middle English furht, fyrht, terror.^[2]
• c. 1250 – sudden fear, terror; the verb, to make afraid.^[4][5][2]
• 1599 – verb with an adverb, to scare away.^[4]
• 1634 – something that causes terror, later a person or thing of shocking or ridiculous appearance.^[4][13]
• 1666 – frighten begins to replace the verb.^[5][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. Sudden, intense fear or alarm: The rattle of the shutters filled the children with fright.^[11][14]
2. An instance of this; a sudden shock: You gave me such a fright, creeping up like that!^[11][14]
3. (informal) A person or thing that looks grotesque, ugly or ridiculous: After the storm his hair was a fright.^[11][13][14]
4. take fright: to become frightened.^[11][13]

Verb

1. (poetic or dialect) To frighten or scare; also with away or off.^{[11][13][4][14]}
2. (obsolete, Old English–1325) To be afraid.^[4][13]

Word family

• frightful
• fright wig
• mike fright
• stage fright

Related words

• frighten
• affright
• fear

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c d e f g Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
8. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
10. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ a b c d e f g h Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)