What's the difference between scary and terrifying?

Scary


Definition:

  • (n.) Barren land having only a thin coat of grass.
  • (a.) Subject to sudden alarm.
  • (a.) Causing fright; alarming.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) You can see where the religious meme sprung from: when the world was an inexplicable and scary place, a belief in the supernatural was both comforting and socially adhesive.
  • (2) For a few fevered weeks it was "who is the least scary?"
  • (3) I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m scary, I’ll fuckin’ scare you then.
  • (4) Albeit an unloveable, slightly scary Ron Burgundy in a 'I may now be a low level Tesco manager in a cheap suit but I still remember how to handle a stanley knife' kind of way," reckons Robert Lowery, who is forgetting that Jim White has a phone.
  • (5) Think the build-up to Brexit was polarising and scary?
  • (6) We usually only hear scary stories about invaders such as the Asian hornet , a lethal predator of honeybees.
  • (7) And even more scary, I have a drillion moles all over my body, some of which have now started itching, on my back.
  • (8) Asked about such mis-steps, Frieden said: “Ebola is scary.
  • (9) The trail north from the scary little airstrip at Lukla is chocker with trekkers – at times it's more like a queue than a walk.
  • (10) Onward to dystopia then: Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) The front page attacks on the 3 judges for basically just doing their job is scary.
  • (11) Honestly, it's not scary for me to die for freedom."
  • (12) I've never done it before; it's exciting and a little bit scary ... Adam Lloyd 05 November 2013 5:49pm Hi David, Big fan of your work!
  • (13) And to make your conscience even clearer, a percentage of every purchase goes back to local independent bookshops, helping them to survive in the scary era of all-online shopping.
  • (14) The white paper proposals were “scary” and threatened multiple areas of conservation, not just crocodile management, he said.
  • (15) There is a real risk of hunger growing in our city and across the nation and of people going without and that's a scary, scary thing.” Grimaldi says he doesn’t plan to introduce rationing yet.
  • (16) They told us that they think feminism is angry and scary and difficult and "not for them", and that feminists aren't feminine or sexy and that they hate men.
  • (17) But I was wrong to peg Let’s Be Cops down in the mire with the Scary Movie franchise.
  • (18) Cancer is scary, but it should not be forgotten that treatment options and outcomes have never been better and continue to improve.
  • (19) It is our job to help them through a distressing and scary time.
  • (20) As one scientist told me, and as a YouTube video of a Samsung S5 exploding after being hit with a hammer confirms: “Lithium-ion batteries are quite scary.” This is partly why they have improved by only a factor of two or three in 25 years.

Terrifying


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Terrify

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It's a genuine fear, to be terrified of being labelled a racist.
  • (2) The woman who had lost her husband and son had another son, 20 years old, and she was terrified.
  • (3) "I find that terrifying frankly; safety comes from being in a team.
  • (4) In August, the capital came to a standstill as terrified workers were forced to stay home after gang leaders orchestrated a forced public transport boycott by killing a dozen bus drivers in response to a crackdown by authorities against organised crime.
  • (5) Pope is at once sympathetic and terrifying, and it's a measure of Washington's performance that she has to reassure me she's nothing like Pope in real life.
  • (6) This raises two issues: first, the treatment being meted out to thousands of people should be a moral offence to all of us; and second, our flexible labour market and increasingly brutal welfare system are now so constructed that even if you are doing well, it is perfectly possible that you could fall ill, and then find yourself just as terrified as the thousands who are currently being herded through the WCA process.
  • (7) As he described, with something approaching relish, the horrifying effect of a desperate eurozone willing to destroy the British economy, our industry and our society, purely to protect itself, I was reminded of the epic Last Judgement by John Martin, now in the Tate, which depicts the terrifying chaos as the good are separated from the evil damned.
  • (8) Mugabe and his Zanu-PF thugs, terrified of losing their empire, unleashed a carefully targeted anarchy at anyone who showed the slightest sign of dissent.
  • (9) Lord of the Rings made him the doomed anti-hero , he was easily the best thing in the disastrous Troy, giving Odysseus guile, wit and that familiar, rough-edged charm, and he terrified TV viewers as property developer John Dawson in the dark and brilliant Red Riding .
  • (10) Chained and terrified, she made her choice and lied.
  • (11) I lived through terrifying moments during the steepest of my professional learning curves and was perpetually sleep-deprived.
  • (12) He says of the rumoured mood of fear among staff at Philly HQ: "I wasn't terrifying, but I wasn't someone to be tampered with.
  • (13) This is legitimately terrifying.” Several commentators compared Comey’s sudden sacking with the 1973 “Saturday night massacre” when President Richard Nixon dismissed Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor appointed to look into the Watergate affair.
  • (14) I’d have hated to hear that Russell had been dragged, terrified, to his death.
  • (15) A Peta statement added: "We are appalled by photos of a visibly terrified monkey crudely strapped into a restraint device in which he was allegedly launched into space by the Iranian Space Agency.
  • (16) So, to summarise, Shorten and his speechwriting team looked out into the mildly terrifying and endlessly fracturing political landscape of January 2017 and concluded that politics had to be personal.
  • (17) Meanwhile the Dublin government, terrified of the impact that a UK withdrawal could have on its own economy, has warned darkly of immigration and custom posts returning.
  • (18) But it was on 9 August 2007 that fear took over – the banks, terrified at the scale of the toxic debt in the system, simply stopped lending to each other and the world's money markets froze.
  • (19) "But where in Dostoevsky or Poe the protagonist experiences his double as a terrifying embodiment of his own otherness (and especially his own voraciousness and destructiveness), we barely notice the difference between ourselves and our online double.
  • (20) It wasn't that the drinking was great, but I was so terrified of not drinking.