a. [f. FRIGHT sb. + -FUL.]
† 1. subjectively. Full of terror; timid; alarmed.
c. 1250. Gen. & Ex., 3459.
ðis friȝ[t]ful [folc] ðus a-biden, | |
Quiles ðis daiȝes for[ð] ben gliden. |
1612. Drayton, Poly-olb., xiii. 215.
The wild and frightfull Heards, | |
Not hearing other noyse but this of chattering Birds, | |
Feed fairely on the Launds. |
1677. Gilpin, Dæmonol. (1867), 165. The heart is apt to be startled with threatenings, and moved by commands; especially those that are of a more tender and frightful spirit.
1765. Foote, Commissary, II. Wks. 1799, II. 24. Z. Fung. These Bourgois are so frightful.
1802. Mrs. J. West, Infidel Father, III. 332. I am so frightful at being in a murderers house.
Comb. 1718. Rowe, trans. Lucan, 245.
Ghastly, and frightful-pale her Face is seen, | |
Unknown to chearful Day, and Skies serene. |
2. objectively. a. Tending to cause fright; alarming. Const. to. ? Obs.
1607. Tourneur, Revengers Trag., II. ii. Wks. 1878, II. 64. It fell so without fright-full word.
1690. J. Mackenzie, Siege London-Derry, 31/1. It was then a little more frightful to our people than afterwards.
1725. De Foe, Voy. round World (1840), 349. I could not learn that they saw either wolf or fox, bear, or lion, or, indeed, any ravenous creature, which they had the least reason to be shy or afraid of, or which, indeed, were frightful to the deer.
1812. Shelley, Addr. Irish People, 8. Is danger frightful to an Irishman who speaks for his own liberty and the liberty of his wife and children?
b. Horrible to contemplate, shocking, dreadful, revolting. Often hyperbolically applied to bad or annoying things; cf. awful, fearful, terrible, etc.
A cant word among women for any thing unpleasing (J.).
1700. S. L., trans. C. Frykes Voy. E. Ind., 295. Sea-Devils or Sand-Creepers are 5 or 6 yards long, with a frightful Head, very broad, but not thick, black at top, and white underneath.
1733. Pope, Ep. to Cobham, 250. One would not, sure, be frightful when ones dead.
1752. Hume, Ess. & Treat. (1777), I. 199. To render polygamy more odious, I need not recount the frightful effects of jealousy, and the constraint in which it holds the fair-sex all over the east.
1756. Nugent, Gr. Tour Germany, II. 301. A high tower, from whence he sounds a frightful horn.
1827. Macaulay, Macchiav., Ess. (1850), 33. The annals of France and England present us only with a frightful spectacle of poverty, barbarity and ignorance.
1879. Froude, Cæsar, xii. 162. The Clodius business had been a frightful scandal, and, smooth as the surface might seem, ugly cracks were opening all round the constitution.
† 3. quasi-sb. (pl.) = frightful adjuncts or accessories.
1727. De Foe, Secrets Invis. World (1735), xiii. 329. If he [the Devil] will come in all his Formalities and Frightfuls, he would not be capable of half so many Cozenings and Cheatings as he now puts upon us.