"For Fear That" / "For Fear Of" for Avoidance-Motivated Actions
5 exercises — practise explaining cautious actions with "for fear that" and "for fear of".
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "for fear that" followed by a finite clause describing the feared outcome?
"The team disabled auto-scaling for fear that a runaway loop would rack up an enormous cloud bill" correctly follows "for fear that" with a full finite clause in standard subject-verb order. Option B incorrectly inserts "of" before "that". Option C wrongly inverts the subject and "would". Option D reverses "for" and "fear".
2 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "for fear of" followed by a gerund, as the reduced alternative to "for fear that"?
"The engineer withheld the patch notes for fear of alarming customers before the fix was confirmed" correctly uses "for fear of" followed by the gerund "alarming". Option B wrongly pairs "for fear that" with a gerund instead of a finite clause. Option C wrongly uses the infinitive "to alarm" after "for fear". Option D uses the bare noun "alarm" instead of the required gerund.
3 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "for fear that" with a negative feared outcome, keeping the finite clause intact?
"The reviewer blocked the merge for fear that the change would silently break backward compatibility" correctly keeps the finite clause with "would break" intact after "for fear that". Option B incorrectly inserts "not" into the clause, reversing the intended meaning. Option C misplaces "that" after "the change". Option D uses a non-finite gerund form where a finite verb is required.
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly distinguishes "for fear that" (explaining avoidance motivation) from "so as not to" (a negative purpose infinitive), when a finite clause with its own subject is needed?
"The team froze the schema for fear that a late change would delay the entire release train" is correct because the feared event has its own subject ("a late change"), which requires the finite-clause connector "for fear that" rather than the infinitive-based "so as not to". Option B tries to force "so as not to" onto a finite clause, which is ungrammatical. Option C drops "that" and inserts an unwanted "not", reversing the meaning. Option D incorrectly combines both connectors.
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly places the "for fear of" gerund phrase at the end of a sentence explaining a cautious rollout strategy?
"The team rolled the feature out to five percent of users first, for fear of introducing a regression at full scale" correctly attaches "for fear of" plus the gerund "introducing" at the end of the sentence. Option B misorders "introducing" and "of". Option C wrongly uses the bare verb "introduce" instead of the gerund. Option D reverses "for fear" into "fear for".