daunting vs frightful

daunting

adj
  • Intimidatingly impressive; awe-inspiring, overwhelming. 

  • Appearing to be difficult; challenging. 

  • Discouraging; inspiring fear. 

noun
  • The act of defeating, overcoming, or overwhelming. 

  • The act of discouraging or intimidating; discouragement, intimidation. 

frightful

adj
  • Genuinely horrific, awful, or alarming. 

  • Unpleasant, dreadful, awful (also used as an intensifier). 

adv
  • Frightfully; very. 

How often have the words daunting and frightful occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )