scared spitless
- idiom
- /skɛrd ˈspɪtləs/
- Informal
:
muerto de miedo
- Hearing his name called in the empty room made her scared spitless and she froze in place.
Examples
-
Either it was an ancient Oriental stratagem for driving off demons, or they were just scared spitless; no one ever found out which.
Fiction book (1994) -
When the lights went out in the haunted house, I was scared spitless and wanted to run.
-
Then just as she was about to give birth, the poor woman was scared spitless by a giant turtle.
-
But today, at that damned barn, you were a hot dog, and I was scared spitless, as were your friends.
Fiction book (2002) -
I was scared spitless.
-
She's scared spitless of you, that's all.
Fiction book (1992) -
We could just imagine Big Strong Coach M scared spitless of what was an impending arrest and taking the proverbial coward's way out.
Blog text (9) -
For a couple of years I've been scared spitless that OH and FL would once again have rigged elections since they learned nothing from 2000 and 2004.
Blog text (28) -
I wasn't so much mad as scared spitless, thought Doug Carey, eyeing the headline of the week-old newspaper he could not bring himself to discard.
Fiction book (2002) -
The sudden noise from the dark alley left me scared spitless, unable to move or speak.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Feeling fear or worry about something
∞
1.0
Feeling afraid because you think something bad might happen
263
2.1
Feeling very afraid because you think something bad will happen
143
1.3
Feeling afraid or nervous and easily frightened
29
4.6
So frightened that you cannot move or think clearly
19
9.9
Feeling very afraid because you think something bad will happen
3
1.0
Being afraid because something seems dangerous
Antonyms
How Afraid
Surface Forms
Morphology
scared + spitless
The intensifier 'spitless' is not a productive or semantically transparent adjective (literal 'without spit' has no plausible connection to fear), so the overall meaning 'extremely frightened' cannot be derived from knowing 'scared' and 'spit' alone. This is an idiomatic intensifier where the sense is culture-specific and unpredictable for a B1 learner, making it opaque.
Etymology
Scared spitless may come from the image of someone so frightened they cannot even spit, because their mouth feels dry and they freeze. That's why it means 'extremely frightened' or 'so scared you cannot move'.