Spooky Sayings: The Halloween Edition

Spooky Sayings: The Halloween Edition

What kind of dog do vampires have? A bloodhound. Yes, it’s that time of year again. No, not the time for cheesy jokes. I meant Halloween. In English, we have plenty of phrases to do with… “Pumpkins?” you interject. No, although I’m sure hillbilly farmers have plenty of vocabulary about those. What I meant to say was fear. Dim the lights… cue the spooky music… 

Scared stiff

The word ‘stiff’ means immobile, so if we’re ‘scared stiff’ you’re saying you’re so scared you’re frozen on the spot. (Incidentally, there’s also the phrase, ‘bored stiff’, which you hopefully aren’t feeling right now). Read about Mary, Alice, and Rob, to understand how we use this phrase. You may need to un-dim the lights to read actually.

Mary’s boyfriend pranked her on Halloween by switching off the lights in the middle of a horror movie. She was scared stiff. 

Alice is scared stiff about failing her upcoming exam, especially because she didn’t study for it!

When a traffic cop asked Rob to pull over, he was scared stiff because his license had expired. The good news is that the traffic cop was an old classmate of his. The bad news is that Rob used to steal his lunch money. 

As a matter of interest, the word ‘petrified’ also means so scared that you can’t move (not a great reflex when a T-Rex is chasing you). 

Now, think of a story describing the last time you felt scared stiff, and practise retelling it out loud.

‘You look like/as if you’ve seen a ghost!’

You say this to someone if they look very shocked. Because most of us would be pretty terrified if we saw a ghost. Unless we were Demi Moore and spent our spare time moulding clay with our deceased (though still hunky) ex. There’s a funny clip from Back to the Future III where Marty McFly finds out about the death of his pal Doc Brown and has to travel back in time to rescue him. But before that, he bumps into an alternate-reality version of the professor. “What’s wrong, Marty?” Doc says, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Below is the clip for your viewing pleasure.

A similar idiom goes: ‘(You’re) as pale as a ghost.’ This means that someone looks exceptionally pale, as from shock or illness, or in mid-winter when your skin has not seen sunlight for many moons. This is a good phrase to use to practise using ‘as + adjective + as grammar’, just don’t practise it on your girlfriend when you both hit the beach when summer comes back round again. You may well turn into a ghost.

Scare the living daylights out of (someone)

This expression dates back to the late 18th century, when the word ‘daylights’ was a slang word for ‘eyes’, while ‘living’ was the rough equivalent of the word ‘very’. So the rough translation would have been: ‘To scare the very eyes out of someone.’ I have the mental image of a cartoon character with their eyes shooting out of their sockets. 

A scary story (whoooooo) and challenge

Read the story below and see if you can identify the 12 words and phrases to do with fear.

Poor Mary, Alice, and Rob are having a bad week. The siblings, who share similar physical characteristics in addition to being generally and persistently neurotic, are commiserating over bad coffee at a local restaurant where the easily spooked siblings get together every so often to catch up. (They would try the other restaurant, which is rumoured to have better coffee, but they are too frightened of crossing the road).

“I’ve had the worst week!” grumbles Mary. “I didn’t study for my Economics exam, but I passed it! Actually I… I… got an A.” 

Her brother and sister take a sip of coffee and flinch from the bitter aftertaste. “But that’s great, Mary,” says Rob. “Why on earth are you upset?” “Bbbecause now, they’re moving me to the advanced class, which is in a haunted building. Every time I’m there the hairs on my neck stand on end. I’m scared out of my wits of going there every day!”

Rob and Alice wear panic-stricken expressions. “Oh dear,” says Alice. “I’ll have to organise some garlic to wear around your neck.” “Vampires,” says Rob. “What? Where?” gasps Alice, looking startled and whipping her head around the room, eyeing the waiter who she thought looked awfully suspicious on account of his lustrous moustache. “No, I meant it’s to ward off vampires, not ghosts.” Alice still continues to give the waiter, and pretty much everyone in the restaurant, the side eye.

“Well,” pipes up Alice, “you know how my guy Frank always likes to prank me around Halloween? Well, now with that terrifying celebration approaching, he’s gone into super prankster mode. Yesterday, he rearranged the furniture before I got home, so I ended up sitting on the cat, thinking it was the sofa, and we both nearly jumped out of our skin.”

Rob then tells his story about how rattled he feels knowing that children will be expecting him to dish out sweets on Halloween… when he was a dentist! It was a moral conundrum. Just then, the waiter appeared with the soup. It was one of those strange places that served half-price soup on Tuesdays to go with the weak coffee.

Rob, on drawing the spoon to his mouth, screamed like a banshee (he could outscream both his sisters). “It’s… it’s… an eyeball!” Indeed, it was an eyeball, bobbing about in the tomato broth (the tomato colour added to the effect). Aghast, the ladies realised they had eyeballs in their soup too. Highly alarmed, the anxious patrons did not move a muscle, until the waiter arrived, pulling off his moustache and wig to reveal his true identity.

Everyone yelled at him at the same time. “FRANK!!!”

Answers:

neurotic; spooked; frightened; the hairs on my neck stand on end; scared out of my wits; panic-stricken; startled; we both nearly jumped out of our skin; rattled; screamed like a banshee; aghast; alarmed.