Noun
An instance of frightening; a fright;
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More examples (1)
and ever as great afflictions as most of our Brethren and sufferers for his Name, both in mockings, scoffings, scornings, reproaches, stripes, contradictions, perils at Land, and perils at Sea, fiery tryals, cruel threatenings, grief of heart, sorrow of soul, heats and colds, fastings and watchings, fears within, and frightings without, terrible temptations and persecutions, and dreadful imprisonments and buffetings of Satan; yet in all these our tryals the Lord was very gracious unto us, and not absent himself from us, neither suffered his faithfulness to fail us, but did bear us up, and keep us from fainting in the midst of our extremity;
And now not once evoked, lies Effort dead Before the frightings of a shadowed dread?
More examples (2)
The horrors, too, of the dance of madmen, their hidesous screeching, and the bell-man with his coffin and his cords for strangulation seem concrete heightenings of Sidney's words concerning the cruel conduct of the ogress, Cecropia, towards her imprisoned nieces, "giving them terrors, sometimes with noise of horror, sometimes with sudden frightings in the night, when the solitary darkness thereof might easier astonish the disarmed senses."
Shortly afterward, as the "beast" continued to be "frighted," he sold his horse and shay to a fellow-preacher, Rev. Mr. Smith, who—I doubt not—went through the same elations, depressions, frightings, and self-scourgings in which the Puritan spirit and horseman's pride so strongly clashed.