The word fear, noun and verb, has many dialectal uses. It is found in the compounds fear- fangit, panic-stricken, overcome with fear; and fear-fickle, dangerous, uncertain in temper, inspiring fear. "A fear-fickle horse," was recorded by the English Dialect Doctionary [EDD]in Yorkshire, and 'He'd make a fear-fangit soldier, I reckon,' was the comment of a Lancashire woman.

The phrase for fear is common in Ireland: "For fear I'd take the cold from her now, I said I'd see her at the week-end." Lest for fear, lest, for fear that, is less common but may be heard in places in Ulster: "I must be off, lest for fear I miss the bus."

As a verb the word means to frighten, terrify, alarm, scare. Shakespeare in Measure For Measure II.1. has: "We must not make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey." "The bluidy swords would fear ye," wrote the Scot, Buchan, in one of his 1828 Ballads. Spelled fare in Wexford's Barony of Forth in the old days, "Dinna fare a caules," was recorded there – don't frighten the horses. Notes and Queries recorded this in Cheshire back in 1873: "A whistling woman and a crowing hen Will fear the old lad out of his den." To fear crows, is to frighten rooks off the corn fields in the same Cheshire.

Hence fear-crow, a scarecrow; feorink, terrified, frightening. "They really look quite feorink," was recorded by the EDD in Lancashire. Feared, afraid, frightened; timorous, cowardly, is still in common use in many Irish, English and Scottish dialects. "I'd be feared to go down that road at night," I heard a Wexford girl say of Ballyshannon Lane, where a massacre occurred in 1798. "I am not feared," wrote Walter Scott in The Heart of Midlothian. The usage is common in Ulster. Hence fearder, adj. more afraid, frightened. The Shetland News once reported: "A fearder heart than thine, a more hen-hearted soul, dwells not afar." There is also the adjective feart-like, frightened, like one afraid. The Ayrshire writer, Johnston, in his story Glenbuckie (1889) has: "You look unco feart-like for a bonny young marriet woman."

The phrase feared for is still to be heard in south Wexford. It means afraid of, frightened at, in terror of. "I'm not feared for him, or for ten like him." Scott in St. Ronan (1824) has "I dared hardly face him myself, and there ar no mony folk that I'm feared for."

"I am ferd, by my faith, of þi frele yowth," is found in The Destruction of Troy, c. 1400. The word is from Old English foeran, to frighten.