scared green

English

Adjective

scared green (comparative more scared green, superlative most scared green)

1. (idiomatic, somewhat dated) Extremely scared; terrified.

   Synonyms: scared red, scared pink, scared white

   • 1921, John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers, New York, N.Y.: George H. Doran Company, page 385:

     "It's damn decent. I'm sorry I was so suspicious. I was scared green when I first saw you."

   • 1988, Richard Feynman, Ralph Leighton, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character, New York, N.Y., London: W. W. Norton & Company, →OCLC, page 165:

     By this time I realized what the real difficulty was: the company was scared green that we were going to blame the accident on their instrument.

References

• Jonathon Green (2024) “scared green adj.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang