scare off

scare off

To frighten a person or an animal away from a particular place or thing. A noun or pronoun can be used between "scare" and "off." Can you guys quit screaming at each other in the middle of the department? You're going to scare off my 2 o'clock interview! I can do basic car repairs, but a major one like that would scare me off, honestly. He shot his rifle in the air to scare off the wolves.
See also: off, scare
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

scare (someone or an animal) off

to frighten someone or an animal away. The dog's barking scared the burglar off. The barking scared off the prowler.
See also: off, scare
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • identify with
  • rescue from
  • rescue from (someone or something)
  • third person
  • angle
  • angling
  • not do (someone or oneself) any favors
  • ask back
  • muck out
  • involve with (someone or something)
References in periodicals archive
WARNED Myleene Klass was told by police she should not have used a knife to scare off men in her garden.
This is in disregard to the Director General of Civil Aviation ( DGCA) guidelines as a bird scarer has to be a matriculate and his antecedents They are supposed to be trained about the type of firecrackers to be used to scare off the birds.
As legend goes, he claimed the Devil lurked there, hoping to scare off his workers from filching his prized bottles.
They scare off direct foreign investment by demanding bribes.
Just the words "parliamentary procedure," however, are enough to scare off a meeting novice, but a book is available that makes Robert's Rules of Order understandable even to the timid layman.
Governments whistle in the dark to scare off the demons as they come in range of the graveyard.
The price tag might scare off all but the most committed music fiends, but if you listen to the experts at Hi-Fi News & Record Review, Boulder Amplifiers' goods are "about as close to perfect as you can get." $18,500 retail.
But a real book, written in your take-no-prisonerss-the-infidels-are-at-the-gate prose style, might finally scare off Dubya for good.
Of course, what Bacon and Dyer did may scare off some moviegoers--a prediction based less on the film's sexual content than on its emotional brutality.
They are, however, allowed to return fire, and the Marines claim Hernandez, who carried a .22-caliber rifle to scare off coyotes and other wild animals, fired at them first.
Nothing seems to scare off investors these days and the bond market has still not been able to benefit from all of the uncertainty among weary stock investors.
In addition, hunting would scare off the hogs and deer that panthers eat.
Bosses on the BBC show have drafted in a hawk to scare off noisy seagulls that are disrupting filming.
However, the title 'Ending 'endo' will scare off investors-DTI' (News, 4/18/18) is not accurate and actually the opposite of what we are trying to say.
BIRMINGHAM'S new library has become the squawk of the town after deploying birds of prey to scare off pesky seagulls.