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Macabre vs Scary - What's the difference?

macabre | scary |

As adjectives the difference between macabre and scary

is that macabre is representing or personifying death while scary is causing or able to cause fright.

As a noun scary is

barren land having only a thin coat of grass.

macabre

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Representing or personifying death.
  • * 1941 , George C. Booth, Mexico's School-made Society , page 106
    • There are four fundamental figures. One is a man measuring and comparing his world In front of him is a macabre figure, a cadaver ready to be dissected. This symbolizes man serving mankind. The third figure is the scientist, the man who makes use of the information gathered in the first two fields of mensurable science.
  • Obsessed with death or the gruesome.
  • * 1993 , Theodore Ziolkowski, "Wagner's Parsifal'' between Mystery and Mummery", ''in'' Werner Sollors (ed.), ''The Return of Thematic Criticism , pages 274-275
    • Indeed, in the 1854 draft of Tristan he planned to have Parzival visit the dying knight, and both operas display the same macabre obsession with bloody gore and festering wounds.
  • Ghastly, shocking, terrifying.
  • * 1927 [1938], , Introduction
    • The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life.

    Synonyms

    * (ghastly) ghastly, horrifying, shocking, terrifying

    Derived terms

    * danse macabre

    References

    Anagrams

    * English borrowed terms ----

    scary

    English

    Etymology 1

    Adjective

    (er)
  • Causing or able to cause fright
    • The tiger's jaws were scary.
    She was hiding behind her pillow during the scary parts of the film.
  • (US, colloquial, dated) Subject to sudden alarm; nervous, jumpy.
    • (Whittier)
  • * 1916 , Texas Department of Agriculture, Bulletin (issues 47-57), page 150:
    • And let us say to these interests that, until the Buy-It-Made-In-Texas movement co-operates with the farmers, we are going to be a little scary of the snare.
    Synonyms
    * (causing fright) frightening

    Etymology 2

    From dialectal English .

    Noun

  • Barren land having only a thin coat of grass.

    • Anagrams

    * *