Scarecrow vs Bugbear - What's the difference?
scarecrow | bugbear |
An effigy, typically made of straw and dressed in old clothes, fixed to a pole in a field to deter birds from eating seeds or crops planted there.
(figuratively, pejorative) A tall, thin, awkward person.
(figurative) Anything that appears terrifying but offers no danger.
A person clad in rags and tatters.
(UK, dialect) A bird, the black tern.
To splay rigidly outward, like the arms of a scarecrow.
* 2006 , Ron S. King, Nowhere Street (page 109)
* 2010 , Robert N. Chan, The Bad Samaritan
An ongoing problem; a recurring obstacle or adversity.
A source of dread; resentment; or irritation.
* Alexander Pope, Epistle I of the First Book of Horace; to Lord Bolingbroke
*1841 , Dickens,
*:What have I done to be made a bugbear of, and to be shunned and dreaded as if I brought the plague?
An imaginary creature meant to inspire fear in children.
*1900 , Carl Schurz,
*:The partisans of the Administration object to the word “imperialism,” calling it a mere bugbear having no real existence.
In lang=en terms the difference between scarecrow and bugbear
is that scarecrow is to splay rigidly outward, like the arms of a scarecrow while bugbear is to alarm with idle phantoms.As nouns the difference between scarecrow and bugbear
is that scarecrow is an effigy, typically made of straw and dressed in old clothes, fixed to a pole in a field to deter birds from eating seeds or crops planted there while bugbear is an ongoing problem; a recurring obstacle or adversity.As verbs the difference between scarecrow and bugbear
is that scarecrow is to splay rigidly outward, like the arms of a scarecrow while bugbear is to alarm with idle phantoms.scarecrow
English
(wikipedia scarecrow)Noun
(en noun)- A scarecrow set to frighten fools away. — Dryden.
- No eye hath seen such scarecrows . I'll not march with them through Coventry, that's flat. — Shakespeare.
See also
* bird-scarer * scarerVerb
(en verb)- his small frame seeming scarecrowed in the over-large black coat.
- An arctic wind whooshes down Columbus Avenue like the IRT express, catching her bags, scarecrowing her arms, and threatening to take her broad-brimmed hat downtown.
bugbear
English
(wikipedia bugbear)Alternative forms
* bug-bearNoun
(en noun)- But, to the world no bugbear is so great
- As want of figure and a small estate.