Fearmonger

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈfɪəmʌŋɡə/

Definitions

1. A person that intentionally creates or amplifies fear in order to gain influence or control over others
2. Someone who deliberately spreads anxiety or alarm among people to influence their emotions or actions
3. A person who provokes or increases fear in others for personal or political advantage

Etymology: Fearmonger began life as a plain compound: "fear" plus "monger," an old English word for a dealer in a particular commodity, as in "ironmonger" or "costermonger." Those trades are where the word's sense comes from. A monger sold something, and in time the term stretched beyond goods to anyone who peddled a particular thing, including, by extension, a person who promotes something undesirable. A fearmonger, then, is someone who trades in fear, stocking it and selling it to others. The word is a back-formation from "fearmongering," the more basic noun-plus-activity form. Speakers apparently took the -ing form and treated the -er form as the agent, reversing the usual direction in which a noun is derived from a verb. Fearmonger is therefore the younger term in its family, even though its parts are older and more familiar than the whole.

Synonyms: alarmist, scaremonger, panic-monger, doomsayer, propagandist