[ UK /dˈa‍ɪ‍ə/ ]
[ US /ˈdaɪɝ, ˈdaɪɹ/ ]
ADJECTIVE
  1. fraught with extreme danger; nearly hopeless
    a dire emergency
    a desperate illness
    on all fronts the Allies were in a desperate situation due to lack of materiel
  2. causing fear or dread or terror
    the awful war
    a fearful howling
    the dread presence of the headmaster
    dire news
    a terrible curse
    an awful risk
    a career or vengeance so direful that London was shocked
    horrendous explosions shook the city
    a dreadful storm
    polio is no longer the dreaded disease it once was
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How To Use dire In A Sentence

  • Smith, who is also a director of Norwich City Football Club, said her CBE was a "very, very great honour". BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
  • Their dried dung is found everywhere, and is in many places the only fuel afforded by the plains; their skulls, which last longer than any other part of the animal, are among the most familiar of objects to the plainsman; their bones are in many districts so plentiful that it has become a regular industry, followed by hundreds of men (christened "bone hunters" by the frontiersmen), to go out with wagons and collect them in great numbers for the sake of the phosphates they yield; and Bad Lands, plateaus, and prairies alike, are cut up in all directions by the deep ruts which were formerly buffalo trails. VIII. The Lordly Buffalo
  • A specially designed speculum is used to help direct the injection into the G-spot, with effects lasting around four months. G Marks The Spot
  • Some of my remarks here are directed toward conventional scientists, who generally refrain from commenting critically on the wild ideas of a few of their colleagues because it is bad manners.
  • There was a deal of shouting from Jamie's direction, and general hubbub, as a few people came out of the pothouse, staring. A Breath of Snow and Ashes
  • In this regard, I offer a few guesses about some general directions in which statistical physics may change.
  • ‘Break, break, break,’ for instance, is a bitter poem on unrecompensed, pointless loss, but it achieves its power and makes its point very indirectly, largely through structural implications.
  • The opposite change occurs in what are termed fastigiate varieties, where the branches, in place of assuming more or less of a horizontal direction, become erect and nearly parallel with the main stem as in the Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants
  • He is a bit upset by that, that anybody thought he was wanting to leave just for one half-time where I was more direct with the players than I have been for a few months.
  • Alcohol abuse can be inherited but researchers had found few genes directly linked to it. The Sun
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