Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Lesson 376. Today we're going to look at the
difference between frightening, frightful and frightened . Okay. Let's take a look at
the note here. If someone or something is frightening , it causes others to feel
fear or causes someone to feel fear. It's a little similar to you know, other ones
that we covered before like bored and boring. Where if somebody is boring they
cause other people to be bored , but if you're bored
it means you feel bored. So this was very similar the difference between
frightening and frightened. All right. Let's, let's continue here . Let's look at the first
examples. So example number one. That, that scene from this horror movie was
too frightening for small children. So it caused small children to have fear. So it
was frightening for the children. Okay. Good.
Or number two here. It is frightening to think of the position, we would be in if
he lost his job. So this ... maybe this might cause this family to have some
fear. Maybe the father thought that he might be downsized and they might be out
of an income. That could put fear into the family. So that would be very
frightening. It could be a frightening situation in that sense. Okay. Good. Now
let's take a look at frightened here. Frightened means someone feels fear or
shows fear. So the the fear on their face or they feel fear, especially suddenly.
Okay. So let's look at the first one. That frightened child hugged her mother
because she was afraid of a dog. So she is the small child is showing fear. She
hugs her mother and she hugged her mother. Oh please, please !
So she is showing fear. So in that case we say that she is frightened. Or number
two. My dog was frightened by the sound of thunder. Yeah. I've seen some dogs get
scared about thunder before. So, so of course, the dog feels fear. So the dog is frightened.
All right. Now here were the X, with the X, this is where some students might mess
up, especially students of ESL. They might confuse the difference between
frightened and frightening. So let's look at this first example here. Many
frightening passengers screamed when the plane experienced strong turbulence. No.
Of course this is wrong. That's why we have an X here. If you say the passengers
are frightening, it means that the passengers are scary. They're scaring
other people. They're causing others to have fear. So of course with the
check. You should be saying this one . Many frightened passengers... Yeah they feel
fear, so they are frightened. Many frightened passengers screamed when the
plane experienced some strong turbulence. So this is exactly how we use it. This
would probably be one of the most common mistakes that students might make. If
they mix these two up. All right. Now let's look at frightful. Frightful is a more formal,
higher-level, educated word and tends to be more literary and more often used in
British English. All right. So remember if I say it's higher level it means that the
more educated you are, the more likely you might use this more often.
All right. People of lower education , you don't hear them saying frightful very
often. It tends to be more literary too, which means you're more likely to see it
written in books than just spoken directly out of your mouth. It
probably you mostly... you probably don't hear children use it. Although children
out of all these words children might use the word like scary more. And they
might use frightened but scary would probably be even more common for you
know , children. All right. Let's continue. So frightful also has a broader use. It can
be used to mean horror. You know, or feeling horror or experiencing horror. It
could be used for that. In that way it has similarities to both frightening and
frightened but it could also simply mean you know, extreme in degree. In that case
that that's you know, that's really not like frightening or frightened. Okay. Or it
could mean feeling anxiety of stress too. All right. So let's take a look at the
first example. They were in a frightful hurry. All right. Now this doesn't mean...
They are not in a scared or afraid... they're not afraid in the hurry. It
probably just means like extreme in degree. They were in a , a very serious
hurry. So they were in a frightful hurry. So here's a use for frightful is used in
a different way. The weather outside is frightful. I remember this from a Christmas
song too. We often may hear this too. It might mean more like causing anxiety or stress.
Could it mean scary ? Possibly. If it's really, really bad. But it probably means
causing more stress or , or anxiety. Because it's difficult to go through or
the murder scene was quite frightful. Now this is more like causing horror or
feeling horror. Many bodies were discovered cut into pieces. Yes. So that
is that's , that's experiencing horror. So we might use it that way too. Okay.
Anyway, I hope you got a better feel and know when you might use one ... in which
place rather than the other. Anyway I hope you got it. I hope it was
informative. Thank you for your time. Bye- bye.