scare word
n.— Note: A boo word. «The worries are real—including, among some economists, about the risks of a depression, which despite its scare-word status is just another term for an especially long or deep recession.» —“izing Up the Economic Stimulus” iStockAnalyst Feb. 10, 2009. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
One secret to writing well is … there is no secret! There’s no substitute for simply sitting down day after day to practice the craft and learn from your mistakes. Plus, childhood mixups around word definitions can lead to some funny stories...
Books were rare treasures in the Middle Ages, painstakingly copied out by hand. So how to protect them from theft? Scribes sometimes added a curse to the first page of those books that was supposed to keep thieves away — and some were as vicious as...