What's the difference between fearful and frightful?

Fearful


Definition:

  • (a.) Indicating, or caused by, fear.
  • (a.) Inspiring fear or awe; exciting apprehension or terror; terrible; frightful; dreadful.
  • (a.) Full of fear, apprehension, or alarm; afraid; frightened.
  • (a.) inclined to fear; easily frightened; without courage; timid.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Mike Ashley told Lee Charnley that maybe he could talk with me last week but I said: ‘Listen, we cannot say too much so I think it’s better if we wait.’ The message Mike Ashley is sending is quite positive, but it was better to talk after we play Tottenham.” Benítez will ask Ashley for written assurances over his transfer budget, control of transfers and other spheres of club autonomy, but can also reassure the owner that the prospect of managing in the second tier holds few fears for him.
  • (2) Since the start of this week, markets have been more cautious, with bond yields in Spain reaching their highest levels in four months on Tuesday amid concern about the scale of the austerity measures being imposed by the government and fears that the country might need a bailout.
  • (3) S&P – the only one of the three major agencies not to have stripped the UK of its coveted AAA status – said it had been surprised at the pick-up in activity during 2013 – a year that began with fears of a triple-dip recession.
  • (4) On Friday, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry appeared to confirm those fears, telling reporters that the joint declaration, a deal negotiated by London and Beijing guaranteeing Hong Kong’s way of life for 50 years, “was a historical document that no longer had any practical significance”.
  • (5) I fear that I will have to go through another witch-hunt in order to apply for this benefit."
  • (6) And adding to this toxic mix, was the fear that the hung parliament would lead to a weak government.
  • (7) Ex-patients of a dental fear clinic were found to have significantly reduced, yet still high, dental anxiety scores in comparison with the pre-intervention scores.
  • (8) The hypothesis that the standard acoustic startle habituation paradigm contains the elements of Pavlovian fear conditioning was tested.
  • (9) Wharton feared that if his bill had not cleared the Commons on this occasion, it would have failed as there are only three sitting Fridays in the Commons next year when the legislation could be heard again should peers in the House of Lords successfully pass amendments.
  • (10) In a recent study, Orr and Lanzetta (1984) showed that the excitatory properties of fear facial expressions previously described (Lanzetta & Orr, 1981; Orr & Lanzetta, 1980) do not depend on associative mechanisms; even in the absence of reinforcement, fear faces intensify the emotional reaction to a previously conditioned stimulus and disrupt extinction of an acquired fear response.
  • (11) But that promise was beginning to startle the markets, which admire Monti’s appetite for austerity and fear the free spending and anti-European views of some Italian politicians.
  • (12) First, Dr Collins is fear-mongering when he says that ‘lives will be lost’ as a result of our calculations.
  • (13) Whether out of fear, indifference or a sense of impotence, the general population has learned to turn away, like commuters speeding by on the freeways to the suburbs, unseeingly passing over the squalor.
  • (14) Under pressure from many backbenchers, he has tightened planning controls on windfarms and pledged to "roll back" green subsidies on bills, leading to fears of dwindling support for the renewables industry.
  • (15) The countries have accused each other of cross-border attacks and there are fears the current tension could spark a wider war with Nkunda at its centre.
  • (16) They have not remotely done this so far, largely from fear of domestic political consequences that cannot be simply dismissed.
  • (17) Likud warned: “Peres will divide Jerusalem.” Arab states feared that his dream of a borderless Middle East spelled Israeli economic colonialism by stealth.
  • (18) One of the reasons for doing this study is to give a voice to women trapped in this epidemic,” said Dr Catherine Aiken, academic clinical lecturer in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology of the University of Cambridge, “and to bring to light that with all the virology, the vaccination and containment strategy and all the great things that people are doing, there is no voice for those women on the ground.” In a supplement to the study, the researchers have published some of the emails to Women on Web which reveal their fears.
  • (19) Some have been threatened and assaulted, while others’ homes have been ransacked, their families living in constant fear.
  • (20) The population prevalence of high dental fear was 115 fearful children per 1000 population (SE = 0.02).

Frightful


Definition:

  • (a.) Full of fright; affrighted; frightened.
  • (a.) Full of that which causes fright; exciting alarm; impressing terror; shocking; as, a frightful chasm, or tempest; a frightful appearance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This may be one of the mechanisms by which animals under stress prepare their skeletal muscle for exercise as part of the 'fright and flight' reaction.
  • (2) Shares in London fell sharply for a second successive session on Monday as the world's investors took fright at fears of a meltdown in emerging market economies.
  • (3) That hit stocks as investors took fright, because the iPhone is Apple's biggest revenue generator.
  • (4) Roads were poorly developed and unsafe, hygiene was rudimentary, social security virtually inexistent and perinatal and children's mortality frightfully high.
  • (5) But with his claims last time round being over-inflated, it could be a while before his new rivals take fright.
  • (6) Deployed in an attacking central midfield role behind Peter Crouch, Adam excelled, giving Newcastle quite a few early frights with his incisive through-passes and well-timed late runs into the penalty area.
  • (7) Results correspond to previous studies of coping with chronic illness, and suggest that somatization following physical trauma is better explained with reference to personal meaning than to a fright-model as suggested in the post-traumatic stress criteria of the DSM-III-R.
  • (8) There is a frightful row going on at the IUCN over the decision of its executive director Julia Marton-Lefevre last week to side with Britain over the creation of the marine protected area .
  • (9) Just to put this in context, the Guardian has reported that: "Stock markets took fright on Wednesday as fears grew over the health of the global economy and the ongoing European debt crisis.
  • (10) A fright or shock induced toxic secretion (gel) from the epidermis of the Arabian Gulf catfish, Arius thalassinus, exhibits hemolytic activity when tested against red blood cells from many different sources.
  • (11) This essay -- 1) considers probable risks of retreating in fright from the approach which has significantly reduced the morbidity and mortality of surgical operations over the last 100 years, so that we may balance them against the known and putative risks of transfusion.
  • (12) Analysts immediately wiped £2bn off their forecasts for 2011 – which had been at about £6.5bn – after taking fright at the grim outlook for margins.
  • (13) The City took fright after high court judge Mr Justice Vos announced on Friday morning that he planned to manage the four phone-hacking claims filed against Trinity Mirror's newspapers earlier this week.
  • (14) This trend has resulted in extraordinary progress in many aspects of life, though at the same time created a frightfully specialized lifestyle.
  • (15) If international investors took fright, driving up the cost of serving the UK’s £1.5trn in government debt, he would simply order Threadneedle Street to start creating money and buying up gilts.
  • (16) Alfred Hitchcock's 1950 film, Stage Fright , was criticised for what became known as its "lying flashback" – a long flashback about a murder that we later learn is untrue.
  • (17) But analysts were sceptical of how long the campaign could be sustained, given the fright that investors took at the speed and scale of a slump that wiped out up to $4tn in stock market capitalisation.
  • (18) At the time, she felt so humiliated that she became stricken with stage fright.
  • (19) People’s weak appetite for economic risk may not be the result of pure fear, at least not in the sense of an anxiety like stage fright.
  • (20) There was no evident difference in responsiveness between the four groups, though 3 fish with lesions in the regions ventralis pars dorsalis and ventralis pars ventralis gave fright responses to novel stimuli.