What do monsters, movies and moments have in common? They all top the list of nouns which collocate with the adjective scary in the Cambridge English Corpus! This Halloween, language researcher Laura Grimes explores the words and phrases associated with the spookiest time of year.
As Halloween revellers plan their fancy dress costumes and prepare to take to the streets for some trick-or-treating, I took a look inside the multi-billion-word Cambridge English Corpus to give us some linguistic insight into our most talked-about fears.
Despite its British roots (originally derived from a contracted form of the Scot’s All Hallows Eve), nowadays, the word Halloween is mentioned much more frequently (three time more in fact) in American English than British English. However, its frequency of use in the UK is steadily catching up – perhaps due to the contagious popularity of the Halloween holiday celebrations seen in America.
‘Scary’ words
In the Corpus, we see the noun fear collocating with adjectives such as irrational, constant, genuine, heightened, deep, nagging and intense. The verb scare alone has nearly 34,000 occurrences in the Corpus, so it would seem there are lots of things keeping us awake at night. We also see plenty of occurrences of similar verbs like frighten, terrify and petrify.
But just how scared are we about things?
Expressing our fears
Here are the top five adverbs, in order of frequency, found alongside common adjectives expressing fear:
Scared: very, really, pretty, so, little
Afraid: not / n’t, so, too, very, never
Frightened: too, so, very, not, really
Terrified: so, absolutely, too, just, still
Petrified: absolutely, so, just, too, still
Notice the negative markers not / n’t at the top of the list for modifiers of afraid, and never also features in the top five – it seems this is the language combination we choose when we are feeling brave and fearless!
The Corpus also reveals that we have a few favourite idioms and phrases to help express our fears: scared stiff, scared to death, scared out of one’s mind / wits, filled with fear, scare the living daylights out of, and scared witless.
But what are these terrifying things we’re so afraid of?
Most talked about fears
When we search for the nouns most commonly associated with adjectives like scared, frightened, terrified, petrified and afraid, many predictable fears are revealed; at the top of the list are death, heights, and the dark, as well as other common fears such as dogs, spiders, water, and needles.
However, our search also unearthed some more surprising fears – according to the Cambridge English Corpus, we’re afraid of people, change, failure, commitment, and retaliation! We also commonly express fear about the consequences, the future, the truth and the unknown.
When we look at the adjective scary, we find that the nouns with the strongest collocation strength are monster, thought, stuff, movie and moment. Interestingly, scary statistics and scary headlines both feature on this list too. Verbs which collocate with scared, frightened, terrified, petrified and afraid give us some insight into the things we’re fearful of doing or happening. In true British form, being very fearful of offending or upsetting other people, as well as an entrenched fear of confrontation are just some that top the list!
Have we found your greatest fears in the Cambridge English Corpus? Comment below and tell us what scares you the most!
Using scary words in class
If you’re stuck for teaching ideas this Halloween, why not try some of these activities?
1. Halloween word lists
To help you prepare a macabre lesson this Halloween, you can find themed word lists on Cambridge Dictionary for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners.
2. Spooky stories
Pick out key words and phrases found in this article or the Cambridge Dictionary Halloween wordlists and present these to your class. Ensuring your class can see the word list for the duration of the task, ask them to prepare a short story based on a scary experience they have had. For the more confident students, ask them to read their stories aloud and get the rest of the class to mark down every spooky word they hear!
3. Create your own Halloween Corpus
At the start of the class, survey your students on their fears and phobias by asking them to write down three things that scare them. At the end of the class (after you’ve reviewed the answers and counted them up) ask your class to try and guess the most common one. You could then see how they compare to the list presented in this article!
4. Ghost story gap-fills.
Write a short ghost story that leaves several blanks for students to fill in. Working in pairs, ask your class to fill in the gaps using terms, phrases, idioms or common adverb-adjective collocations used to express fear.
Here are some classroom resources for a spooky Halloween lesson!