fear

/fɪər/

/fɪr/

Definition

B1 an unpleasant emotion or thought that you have when you are frightened or worried by something dangerous, painful, or bad that is happening or might happen: Trembling with fear, she handed over the money to the gunman. Even when the waves grew big, the boy showed no (signs of) fear. I have a fear of heights. The low profit figures simply confirmed my worst fears. [+ that] There are fears that the disease will spread to other countries.Fear and phobiasAnxiety and worry - general words be in fear of your life › to be frightened that you might be killed: Lakisha sat inside, in fear of her life, until the police came.Afraid be no fear of sth informal › to be no possibility that a particular thing will happen: Malcolm knows the city well, so there's no fear of us getting lost (= we will not get lost).Impossible and improbable for fear that/of sth C2 because you are worried that a particular thing might happen: They wouldn't let their cat outside for fear (that) it would get run over. I didn't want to move for fear of waking her up.Connecting words which introduce a cause or reason

(Definition of fear noun from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

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