scaremonger meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

scaremonger

noun

Etymology From scare + monger.

Someone who spreads worrying rumours or needlessly alarms people.

I have refrained from giving actual names and dates, for obvious reasons, and have therefore been compelled, even at the risk of being again denounced as a scaremonger, to present the facts in the form of fiction—fiction which, I trust, will point its own patriotic moral.1909, William Le Queux, Spies of the Kaiser:

verb

Etymology From scare + monger.

To spread worrying rumours.

We're not scaremongering / This is really happening, happening2000, “Idioteque”, in Kid A, performed by Radiohead:
If no new cases come from the Buff Club exposure site, it will be hard to believe politicians scaremongering that the delta variant is so infectious that all you have to do is walk past an infected person to get it.2021 July 2, The NT News, Darwin, page 23, column 2:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.