scarecrow

A crude image or effigy of a person set up in a field to scare birds away from growing crops.

Something frightening but not dangerous.

A gaunt or haggard person.

A figure of straw or clouts, made in grotesque semblance of a man, set in a grain-field or a garden to frighten off crows and other birds from the crops; hence, anything set up or intended to frighten or keep off intruders, or to terrify the foolish.

A person so poor and so meanly clad as to resemble a scarecrow.

The black tern, Hydrochelidon fissipes.

Anything set up to frighten crows or other birds from cornfields; hence, anything terifying without danger.

A person clad in rags and tatters.

The black tern.

An effigy, typically made of straw and dressed in old clothes, fixed to a pole in a field to deter birds from eating seeds or crops planted there.