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Bugbear   Listen
noun
Bugbear, Bugaboo  n.  
1.
Something frightful, as a specter; anything imaginary that causes needless fright; something used to excite needless fear; also, something really dangerous, or an imaginary monster, used to frighten children, etc. "Bugaboos to fright ye." "But, to the world no bugbear is so great As want of figure and a small estate." "The bugaboo of the liberals is the church pray." "The great bugaboo of the birds is the owl."
2.
A source of concern; as, the old bugaboo of inflation still bothers them.
Synonyms: Hobgoblin; goblin; specter; ogre; scarecrow; bogeyman; boogeyman; booger.


Bugbear  n.  Same as Bugaboo.


verb
Bugbear  v. t.  To alarm with idle phantoms.


adjective
Bugbear  adj.  Causing needless fright.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Bugbear" Quotes from Famous Books



... it," said the priest; "that Capuchin is an ass, and he taught your son rather to bray than to talk. You'll act wisely by throwing into the fire that 'Life of St Catherine,' that prayer for the cure of chilblains and that history of the bugbear, with which that monk poisoned your son's mind. For the same price you paid for Friar Ange's lessons, I'll give him my own; I'll teach him Latin and Greek, and French also, that language which Voiture and Balzac have brought ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... fact, much deeper contemplations and maturer ponderings, only tend, in the long run, to bring us back to our original starting-point. It is just this very bugbear of Responsibility which in the consciences and mouths of grown-up persons sends the bravest of our youth post-haste to confusion—so impinging and inexorable are the thing's portentous horns. It is indeed after these maturer considerations ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... of the gallows," said Turpin to Peter. "More fools they. A mere bugbear to frighten children, believe me; and never yet alarmed a brave man. The gallows, pshaw! One can but die once, and what signifies it how, so that it be over quickly. I think no more of the last leap into eternity than clearing a five-barred gate. A rope's end for it! So let ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... that if a man has a fixed place of residence and carries on a dry goods business, he might gamble as much as should please him and the law would not take hold of him. He would ask anybody to read the law understandingly and then deny this round assertion. This act, said he, is bugbear—it is a disgrace as it now stands, for it smacks of cowardice. The legislators, he presumed, had a little sense, and they knew that some kind of a law must be passed, and they were ingenious enough to know how to frame it to sound well, and yet be comparatively powerless. ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... this abominable and hideous mask before its eyes, it is afraid of death. But its fear is only because of its lack of understanding. If it knew, it would by no means be afraid or shudder at death. Our reason is like a little child who has become frightened by a bugbear or a mask, and cannot be lulled to sleep; or like a poor man, bereft of his senses, who imagines when brought to his couch that he is being put into the water and drowned. What we do not understand we cannot intelligently deal with. If, for instance, a man has a penny and imagines ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther


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