red scare
noun
Simple meaning
Fearmongering on the topic of a rise in communism that will threaten Western nations.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
rehdskehrSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɹɛdsˈkɛɹ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Fearmongering on the topic of a rise in communism that will threaten Western nations, especially from Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc in the past, China, Cuba, North Korea, etc. but also from any leftist movement.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Fearmongering on the topic of a rise in communism that will threaten Western nations, especially from Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc in the past, China, Cuba, North Korea, etc. but also from any leftist movement.
Used this way, red scare is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It comes across as direct, sometimes bluntly so.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Blunt and forceful
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.