different between fearful vs skittish

English

Alternative forms

• fearefull (obsolete)
• fearfull (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English ferful, fervol, equivalent to fear +? -ful.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?f??f?l/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?f??f?l/
• Rhymes: -???f?l
• Hyphenation: fear?ful

Adjective

fearful (comparative fearfuller or fearfuler or more fearful, superlative fearfullest or fearfulest or most fearful)

1. Frightening.
2. Tending to fear; timid.

   a fearful boy

3. (dated) Terrible; shockingly bad.
4. (now rare) Frightened; filled with terror.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.4:

     Those two great champions did attonce pursew / The fearefull damzell with incessant payns […]

Synonyms

• (frightened): frightened, timid, timorous
• See also Thesaurus:afraid and Thesaurus:cowardly

Translations

Adverb

fearful (comparative more fearful, superlative most fearful)

1. (dialect) Extremely; fearfully.

Further reading

• fearful in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• fearful in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• Lauffer

English

Etymology

Probably from skite (“to move lightly and hurriedly; to move suddenly, particularly in an oblique direction (Scotland, Northern England)”) +? -ish; compare skitter.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?sk?t??/
• (T-flapping) IPA^(key): [?sk????]
• Hyphenation: skit?tish

Adjective

skittish (comparative more skittish, superlative most skittish)

1. Easily scared or startled; timid.

   The cat likes people he knows, but he is skittish around strangers.

   • 1557, Roger Edgeworth, Sermons Very Fruitfull, Godly, and Learned, London: Robert Caly, The fiftenth treatice or Sermon,^[1]

     All such be like a skittish starting horse, whiche coming ouer a bridge, wil start for a shadowe, or for a stone lying by him, and leapeth ouer on the other side into the water, & drowneth both horse and man.

2. Wanton; changeable; fickle
   • c. 1601, William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene 3,^[2]

     How some men creep in skittish fortune’s hall,

     Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!

   • 1785, William Cowper, The Task, London: J. Johnson, Book 2, p. 69,^[3]

     […] ’Tis pitiful

     To court a grin, when you should wooe a soul;

     To break a jest, when pity would inspire

     Pathetic exhortation; and t’ address

     The skittish fancy with facetious tales,

     When sent with God’s commission to the heart.

3. Difficult to manage; tricky.
   • 1872, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book 2, Chapter 15,^[4]

     For everybody’s family doctor was remarkably clever, and was understood to have immeasurable skill in the management and training of the most skittish or vicious diseases.

Synonyms

• (easily scared or startled): spookish, jumpy, skittery, skitterish, squirrelly

Derived terms

• skittishly
• skittishness

Translations

See also

• startle