Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A terrifying specter; a hobgoblin.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Something frightful, as a specter; anything imaginary that causes needless fright; something used to excite needless fear; also, something really dangerous, or an imaginary monster, used to frighten children, etc.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Alternative spelling of
bogeyman .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an imaginary monster used to frighten children
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Your fear of the nationalism boogeyman is so deep it has caused you to abandon the notion of borders and nations-states?
Borjas: What's His Problem?, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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Unfortunately, his fear of the boogeyman is so great that he has lost touch with reality on any level.
Think Progress » BREAKING: Former Enron CEO Ken Lay is dead. 2006
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I†™ m not saying we won, but your inflation of NK into the big bad boogeyman is a joke.
Think Progress » Preemptive Strike On North Korea Is ‘Ill-Conceived’ and ‘Factually-Flimsy’ 2006
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I†™ m not saying we won, but your inflation of NK into the big bad boogeyman is a joke.
Think Progress » Preemptive Strike On North Korea Is ‘Ill-Conceived’ and ‘Factually-Flimsy’ 2006
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"I think the new boogeyman is Latino," Mr. Bonilla-Silva said.
NYT > Home Page By SUSAN SAULNY 2010
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“One of the many neat things about Fisher’s history is that it was written when the British Empire was actually a going concern, not a shadowy boogeyman from the past,” Mencius notes, as he cites this passage:
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I’m not saying we won, but your inflation of NK into the big bad boogeyman is a joke.
Think Progress » Preemptive Strike On North Korea Is ‘Ill-Conceived’ and ‘Factually-Flimsy’ 2006
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A few things bothered me about this statement – first that the union lawyer is the ultimate wall street boogeyman, which is a nice little subtext with which to scare the reader (the union wrinkle seemed a bit artificial to add here).
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A few things bothered me about this statement–first that the union lawyer is the ultimate wall street boogeyman, which is a nice little subtext with which to scare the reader the union wrinkle seemed a bit artificial to add here.
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But, as far as these other attacks, this is sort of par for the course in primary season and you know, in the general election, everybody says they'll come together against the big bad boogeyman, which is whoever the Republican candidate would be.
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