[ US /ˈdɹɛd/ ]
[ UK /dɹˈɛd/ ]
ADJECTIVE
  1. 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
VERB
  1. be afraid or scared of; be frightened of
    I fear the winters in Moscow
    We should not fear the Communists!
NOUN
  1. fearful expectation or anticipation
    the student looked around the examination room with apprehension
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How To Use dread In A Sentence

  • My poor Lirriper was a handsome figure of a man, with a beaming eye and a voice as mellow as a musical instrument made of honey and steel, but he had ever been a free liver being in the commercial travelling line and travelling what he called a limekiln road — “a dry road, Emma my dear,” my poor Lirriper says to me, “where I have to lay the dust with one drink or another all day long and half the night, and it wears me Emma” — and this led to his running through a good deal and might have run through the turnpike too when that dreadful horse that never would stand still for a single instant set off, but for its being night and the gate shut and consequently took his wheel, my poor Lirriper and the gig smashed to atoms and never spoke afterwards. Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings
  • Above: South Shore terminus with four Dreadnoughts in line abreast, demonstrating their legendary capacity to absorb crowds.
  • I don't think they play at all fairly," Alice began, in rather a complaining tone, "and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can't hear oneself speak and they don't seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them -- and you've no idea how confusing it is all the things being alive; for instance, there's the arch I've got to go through next walking about at the other end of the ground -- and I should have croqueted the Queen's hedgehog just now, only it ran away when it saw mine coming! Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
  • He infected mice and rabbits with Trypanosoma gondii, the parasite responsible for the dreaded sleeping sickness, then injected the animals with chemical derivatives to determine if any of them could halt the infection. The Emperor of All Maladies
  • I should have been side by side with you in your existence, having for my only care not to disarrange the cover of my dreadful pit. Les Miserables
  • The Truth is, I had heard so ill a Character of the Town Amours, as being all Libertinism, and more especially the Inns of Court, that I dreaded to launch on so dangerous a Sea; thinking each The Amours of Bosvil and Galesia
  • For once I controlled myself and didn't berate her as a feeling of dread spread through me. THE EXECUTION
  • It was dreadful, because if people are famished and dying you have to do intensive feeding seven or eight times a day.
  • It is dreadfully sad to reflect that he grew up in such a short time and in such tragic circumstances. Times, Sunday Times
  • And I am dreading having to look the people who have witnessed my wretched performance in the eye over dinner. Times, Sunday Times
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