‘惊吓’ is a compound noun meaning ‘fright’ or ‘shock’ — a sudden, intense feeling of fear caused by something unexpected or alarming. The first character 惊 (jīng) means ‘to be startled’ or ‘to feel alarmed’, while the second character 吓 (xià) means ‘to frighten’ or ‘to scare’. Together, they form a noun that emphasizes the emotional state resulting from being frightened — not the act of frightening someone else. It’s commonly used in medical, psychological, and everyday contexts to describe an acute stress reaction.

This word often appears in formal or semi-formal registers — for example, in health reports (e.g., ‘suffered a severe fright’), news accounts of accidents, or parental concerns about children’s reactions to loud noises or sudden events. Unlike the verb 吓 (hè/xià), which can be transitive (‘to scare someone’), 惊吓 functions exclusively as a noun and cannot take objects or be conjugated.