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Spectre terrifying to children
Answer for the clue "Spectre terrifying to children ", 8 letters:
bogeyman
Alternative clues for the word bogeyman
Word definitions for bogeyman in dictionaries
WordNet
Word definitions in WordNet
n. an imaginary monster used to frighten children [syn: bugbear , bugaboo , boogeyman , booger ]
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Word definitions in Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
16c.; see bogey (n.1) + man (n.).
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Word definitions in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
noun EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS ▪ Also known as a boogeyman or bogeyman , one can only have an effect if its victim pays heed to it. ▪ But it helps to expiate our imagined sins if we have a bogeyman to hand, a Drug Baron. ▪ He's the bogeyman of the North Shore. ...
Wiktionary
Word definitions in Wiktionary
n. 1 A menacing, ghost-like monster in children's stories. 2 (context by extension English) Any make-believe threat, especially one used to intimidate or distract.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Boogeyman \Boog"ey*man\, Bogeyman \Bo"gey*man\, n. Something frightful, as a specter; anything imaginary that causes needless fright; something used to excite needless fear; also, something really dangerous, or an imaginary monster, used to frighten children, ...
Usage examples of bogeyman.
Still, every town, and particularly a town with a heritage of crazies like Milagro, needs some sort of bogeyman, banshee, witch, frog-eating Cleofes Apo-daca shaped like a dog, or Abuelo with which to terrorize children during the holiday seasons, and also with which to explain many of the unexplainable things that happen year-round in the neighborhood.
He tole us lots of stores abot people he jump out on and he said sins Miss is our teachr he think no bogeymen will be in our houses bcos one thing a bogey dos not like is Miss finding him.
And then she'd grown up and found out that the real fantasies weren't the Pale Rider or the Tooth Fairy or bogeymen - they were all solid facts.
Then they "might see that the bogeymen of the cultural left are not quite as terrifying as they thought," but "are human beings, too.
On that occasion, the human race, severally and corporately, intellectually and emotionally, had decided to be better people and discard the bogeymen of the past.
Callahan cries out miserably, the cry of a child who suddenly realizes the bogeyman has been real all along, waiting patiently in the closet for its chance.
The mark of the devil on a woman's breast is only a mole, the man who came back from the dead and stood at his wife's door dressed in the cerements of the grave was only suffering from locomotor ataxia, the bogeyman who gibbers and capers in the corner of a child's bedroom is only a heap of blankets.
Over medium wave and short wave, a bogeyman can be brought into the room.
A pious fraud to scare Keepers into keeping their virginity, a bogeyman to frighten babies and girl-children!
There is a remarkable anecdote in Marina Warner's No Go the Bogeyman, in which she recounts finding a copy of Struwwelpeter that had been "vigorously defaced"
The sword swallowers and the fire eaters were Lil's bogeymen at the time.
The bogeymen of our young dreams were the mythical undead cheese-complexioned Plant workers, their wispy hair popping out of their skulls in tufts and clumps while they chewed sticks of spearmint gum, taking turns to look out the Plants' one porthole window and telling Daisy and me tales of braziered cities, too-hot suns, and all the fish in the world floating belly up in the seas.
After all of them, all the old bogeymen who've been let off, allowed to go free, brushed under the carpet, kicked upstairs and even honoured for treachery - the buck stops here!
She'd heard of them all her life, but much like the bogeyman, she'd attributed them to urban legends.
Topping the list of potential new global bogeymen, however, are the Yellow Peril, the alleged threat to American economic security emanating from East Asia, and the so-called Green Peril (green is the color of Islam).