fear – English noun declension

English noun forms of fear

Noun: fear
Singularfear
Pluralfears

Sample Sentences

  • He was struck by fear on seeing the snake.
  • I corralled the judge, and we started off across the fields, in no very mild state of fear of that gentleman's wife, whose vigilance was seldom relaxed. [1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:]
  • Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes. The clear light of the bright autumn morning had no terrors for youth and health like hers. [1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:]
  • Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear. [1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter III (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 1:]
  • Not everybody has the same fears.
  • I have a fear of ants.
  • Spiders are my greatest fear.
  • The feare of the Lord is the beginning of wisedome. [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalm CXI:10:]
  • That sacred dread of all offence to him, which is called the Fear of God. [1846, [John Ruskin], Modern Painters […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, part III (Of Ideas of Beauty), section I (Of the Theoretic Faculty), page 121:]
  • Her feeling of humiliation had intensified as the day had gone on and her hangover had worsened. She now also had 'the fear' to contend with, […] [2019, Ruth Kelly, The Little Vineyard in Provence:]
  • He had the fear, that feeling of dread that you've done something really embarrassing. The fear was a hundred times worse than the hangover. No, a thousand times worse. [2020, Mark Ratcliffe, The Step Down: A Very Scottish Crime:]

Etymology

1. From Middle English feer, fere, fer (“fear”), from Old English fǣr, ġefǣr (“calamity, sudden danger, peril, sudden attack, terrible sight”), from Proto-Germanic *fērō, *fērą (“danger”), from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to go through, carry forth, try”). Cognate with Dutch gevaar (“danger, risk, peril”), German Gefahr (“danger, hazard, risk”), Danish fare (“danger, hazard, risk”), Faroese and Icelandic fár (“accident, anger, calamity”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk fare (“danger”), Swedish fara (“danger, risk, peril”), Latin perīculum (“danger, risk, trial”), Ancient Greek πεῖρα (peîra, “trial, experiment”), Armenian փորձ (pʻorj, “attempt”). Doublet of peril.
2. The verb is from Middle English feren, from Old English fǣran (“to frighten, raven”), from the noun. Cognate with the archaic Dutch verb varen (“to fear, to cause fear”). See: Middle English Nouns 'feer', Dutch Nouns 'gevaar', German Nouns 'Gefahr', Danish Nouns 'fare', Swedish Nouns 'fara', Latin Nouns 'perīculum', Ancient Greek Nouns 'πεῖρα', Old English Nouns 'fǣran'.

Verbs referencing "fear"

Danish Nouns fare, German Nouns Gefahr.