From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishfrighten/scare the life out of somebodyfrighten/scare the life out of somebodyinformal to make someone feel very frightened Don’t do that! You scared the life out of me! → life
Examples from the Corpus
frighten/scare the life out of somebody• When, however-many years later-the script finally did arrive, two things scared the life out of me. 