scare quote
noun
Simple meaning
A quotation mark deliberately used to provoke a reaction or to indicate that the author does not approve of a term or clause.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
skehrkwohtSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈskɛɹkˈwoʊt
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
chiefly in the plural
A quotation mark deliberately used to provoke a reaction or to indicate that the author does not approve of a term or clause, rather than to identify a direct quotation.
The use of quotation marks to indicate that it is not the authors preferred terminology
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: A quotation mark deliberately used to provoke a reaction or to indicate that the author does not approve of a term or clause, rather than to identify a direct quotation.
Used this way, scare quote is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a grammar or language-study use: it describes how language works, so it appears in teaching and reference writing.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Formal
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Formal and precise
Where it naturally appears
- Academic writing
- Education/classroom
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
Comfortable in writing and prepared speech; in casual conversation a shorter everyday word usually sounds more natural.
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.