Synonyms and Antonyms of fearsome
1
causing fear
- at night the child would always imagine that there were fearsome monsters lurking under his bed
alarming, dire, direful, dread, dreadful, fearful, forbidding, formidable, frightening, frightful, ghastly, hair-raising, horrendous, horrible, horrifying, intimidating, redoubtable, scary, shocking, spine-chilling, terrible, terrifying
daunting, demoralizing, disconcerting, discouraging, dismaying, disquieting, distressing, disturbing, perturbing, startling, threatening, troubling, trying, unnerving
bone-chilling, creepy, eerie (also eery), weird
appalling, atrocious, awful, grisly, gruesome (also grewsome), hideous, horrid, macabre, monstrous, nightmarish
calming, comforting, consoling, inviting, lulling, pacifying, quieting, reassuring, relaxing, soothing, tranquilizing (also tranquillizing)
nonintimidating, nonthreatening
2
extreme in degree, power, or effect
- after working all afternoon in the hot sun, I had developed a fearsome thirst
acute, almighty, blistering, deep, dreadful, excruciating, explosive, exquisite, fearful, ferocious, fierce, frightful, furious, ghastly, hard, heavy, heavy-duty, hellacious, intense, intensive, keen, profound, terrible, vehement, vicious, violent
accentuated, aggravated, concentrated, deepened
emphasized, enhanced, heightened, intensified, magnified
stressed
exhaustive, thorough
harsh, rigorous, severe
feeble, weak
shallow, superficial
moderated, qualified
alleviated, eased, lightened, toned (down)
abated, decreased, diminished, lessened, reduced, subdued
3
easily frightened
- the more fearsome of the two children would only peer at the guests from a distance
chicken, chickenhearted, chicken-livered, cowardly, craven, dastardly, gutless, lily-livered, milk-livered [archaic], poltroon, pusillanimous, spineless, unheroic, yellow
jittery, jumpy, spooky
anxious, apprehensive, nervous
afraid, alarmed, horrified, panicked, panicky, panic-stricken
