Affrayed

Part of speech: adjective, verb

Definitions

1. Filled with sudden fear or apprehension, as when startled or threatened
2. Struck by sudden terror or distress, experiencing fright or anxiety
3. Seized by alarm or dread, caught in a state of fear or unease

Etymology: "Affrayed" is the past tense and past participle of "affray," a verb meaning to terrify or frighten. The surprise lies in the buried meaning of its ancestry: the verb's root is "peace." It descends from a Frankish word, "friþu," meaning security or peace, which is related to the English "frith" and the German "Friede." An Old French verb, "esfreer," used that idea to mean to disturb or remove the peace from someone, so frightening a person was, at heart, breaking their calm. The word passed through Anglo-Norman "afrayer," which carried the same sense of terrifying or disturbing, and reached Middle English as "affraien." Its roots reach back to a Vulgar Latin form, "exfridāre," built around the same Germanic peace-word, so the Latin contribution was a prefix sitting on a Germanic core. The inflected forms "affrayed" and "affrayed" follow the regular past pattern of the verb, which is the same for both the simple past and the past participle.

Synonyms: frightened, alarmed, terrified

Antonyms: calm, composed