Afear

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. An archaic verb meaning to frighten someone or cause them to become afraid
2. Old-fashioned term for scaring a person or filling them with fear and dread
3. Obsolete word describing the act of making someone feel alarmed or terrified

Etymology: Afear is a rare, archaic word meaning to frighten, and it is one of the few English words where the prefix does most of the work. Old English "āfǣran" was built from the perfective prefix "ā-", which marks an action carried through to completion, and "fǣran", meaning to frighten or, in some uses, to devour. The root "fǣr" meant a sudden danger, a calamity, or an ambush, so the word carried the sense of being struck by something unexpected. Its meaning drifted from the physical toward the emotional. The verb "fǣran" was also used of predators seizing prey, so the idea of terror was tied closely to a sudden attack. Over the centuries the verb narrowed to the purely mental sense of being frightened, while the attacking element faded from view. In Middle English the form appeared as "aferen", and it survived into the language as a literary word, mostly used in older writing and poetry. Its use today is almost entirely antiquarian, which leaves the prefix and the old predatory sense as the clearest traces of its origin.

Synonyms: frighten, scare, alarm, terrify

Antonyms: reassure, embolden