Word: frightener
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Just Enough Trouble. John Bricker believes in moderation in all things. He has not been so overpoweringly successful as to frighten away timid voters. He has introduced no startling innovations to Ohio government, has left no legislative landmarks...
Spare the Horses. Building the air force was a slow business. Seven years after the Wright brothers' first flight, a daring young British captain shocked the military by turning up for army maneuvers in a biplane. "The cavalry in particular were unfriendly. They said the airplane would frighten their horses." Britain entered World War I with 113 air and sea planes. Over the Turks in North Africa she had "complete air supremacy" -three planes to none. In the rarefied desert air the "bird tages . . . would often have to run for a couple of miles before becoming airborne...
Goebbels and his faction believe that a bitter defense of Festung Europa and the campaign to frighten the U.S. and Britain with Russian Communism can bring the Allies to terms. Germany, according to this reasoning, would emerge with substantial victory from this war, keep the opportunity for total victory in the next...
...myth of the Japanese sniper is exploded by returning officers. They say that Japanese, snipers are an annoyance, little more. They hide excellently but their aim is poor. Sniping serves, however, to frighten men who will not deliberately ignore it. Japanese machine-gunners often set up their guns in a fixed position, and do not traverse and search. The result is that men in the line of Japs' fire can move aside and advance safely...
...conferred himself upon the New York Times in 1909, fresh out of Hamilton College, where his fraternity mates were said to have used him to frighten away unwanted prospects. His writing style, which in terms of liquors was a decidedly pink drink, bubbled up in the Times's drama department, where he acquired an unsmiling assistant named George S. Kaufman. When Kaufman eventually satirized him as the waspish subject of The Man Who Came to Dinner, Woollcott declared: "The thing's a terrible insult and I've decided to swallow...