for fear of
41
4.2
- idiom
:
por miedo a
- You say nothing else for fear of what I might do.
- for fear of losing
- avoid school for fear of
- remain silent for fear of
But they are not usually internalizing and holding back for fear of upsetting other people.
- But they are not usually internalizing and holding back for fear of upsetting other people.
- Unacknowledged, experienced but not acknowledged for fear of consequences.
- It is not normal to hold back on saying something for fear of being shouted down or gaslighted.
- Playing it safe is being unwilling to take a chance for fear of not looking like your absolute best.
- We become afraid to speak our feelings or our truths or our needs for fear of being silenced or shamed.
- So you sometimes hold in your greatness or your uniqueness for fear of being judged, but you'll be judged anyway.
- And, and the, the third one was that I didn't express my feelings for fear of disturbing or, or displeasing others.
- And I saw that in a, in a lot of my friends who grew up in circumstances similar to that, they were afraid to try for fear of, of not measuring up.
- I couldn't stand to stay in one room for fear of succumbing to my own odors, and it went on for hours.
- Theresa May, who was the foreign, the interior secretary squashed a full scale investigation for fear of alienating Russia.
- The Fed is going to Paul Volcker us into our own depression for fear of a wage price spiral and we might lose a decade of stock market returns.
- Often people don't want to seek feedback for fear of being criticized, but feedback is essential to learning what's working and what's not.
- And that voice will be, you know, will be heard rather than being afraid to speak up for fear of getting that, you know, the head taken off.
Examples
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Women are terrified to go into underground parking garages for fear of being attacked.
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And our man dare not speak his mind for fear of imprisonment.
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Avoiding people, places or activities for fear of health risks.
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for fear of international complications.
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I've told nobody in the world for fear of discovery.
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Anna had not written to them for fear of jeopardizing their safety through contact with her.
Fiction book (1991) -
I begged him to stop, for fear of what we might accidentally call forth.
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Others in the profession are reluctant to speak up for fear of jeopardizing current or future funding.
Academic text (2000) -
We become afraid to speak our feelings or our truths or our needs for fear of being silenced or shamed.
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People are afraid to go out at night for fear of being robbed or killed.
Synonyms
53
6.8
To do something because you are afraid a bad thing will happen
How Worried
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a direct composition of 'for' (marking reason) + 'fear of' (anxiety about something), yielding the meaning 'because one is afraid of X' which is transparently derivable from the parts. This causal/psychological construction has clear parallels across many languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
The expression for fear of comes from a clear image: fear stands in front of you and stops you from doing something, so you avoid doing things because you are afraid. So, for fear of means 'to avoid' or 'because one is worried that something might happen'.