Synonyms: alarming
Definition: frightening because of an awareness of danger
Similar words: appalling, dismaying
Definition: causing consternation
Usage: appalling conditions
Similar words: atrocious, ugly, frightful, horrible, horrifying
Definition: provoking horror
Usage: an atrocious automobile accident; a frightful crime of decapitation; an alarming, even horrifying, picture; war is beyond all words horrible- Winston Churchill; an ugly wound
Similar words: horrendous, horrific, awful, dire, direful, dread, dreaded, dreadful, frightening, fearful, fearsome, terrible
Definition: causing fear or dread or terror
Usage: the awful war; an awful risk; dire news; a career or vengeance so direful that London was shocked; the dread presence of the headmaster; polio is no longer the dreaded disease it once was; a dreadful storm; a fearful howling; horrendous explosions shook the city; a terrible curse
Similar words: threatening, baleful, ominous, minacious, minatory, sinister, menacing, forbidding
Definition: threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments
Usage: a baleful look; forbidding thunderclouds; his tone became menacing; ominous rumblings of discontent; sinister storm clouds; a sinister smile; his threatening behavior; ugly black clouds; the situation became ugly
Similar words: hair-raising, nightmarish, bloodcurdling
Definition: extremely alarming
Similar words: chilling, shivery, shuddery, scarey, scary
Definition: provoking fear terror
Usage: a scary movie; the most terrible and shuddery...tales of murder and revenge
Similar words: creepy, creepy-crawly
Definition: causing a sensation as of things crawling on your skin
Usage: a creepy story; I had a creepy-crawly feeling
Similar words: redoubtable, unnerving, formidable
Definition: inspiring fear
Usage: the formidable prospect of major surgery; a tougher and more redoubtable adversary than the heel-clicking, jackbooted fanatic- G.H.Johnston; something unnerving and prisonlike about high grey wall
Similar words: gruesome, grim, grisly, ghastly, sick, macabre
Definition: shockingly repellent; inspiring horror
Usage: ghastly wounds; the grim aftermath of the bombing; the grim task of burying the victims; a grisly murder; gruesome evidence of human sacrifice; macabre tales of war and plague in the Middle ages; macabre tortures conceived by madmen
Similar words: hairy
Definition: hazardous and frightening
Usage: hairy moments in the mountains
Similar words: petrifying
Definition: paralyzing with terror
Similar words: stupefying
Definition: shocking with surprise and consternation
Usage: the stupefying impact of the tragedy
Similar words: terrific, terrifying
Definition: causing extreme terror
Usage: a terrifying wail