Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Dreadfully; terribly; woefully.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adverb in a direful manner

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Noted Dr. F. B. Kane, of San Francisco: “Very many times my attention has been drawn professionally to the injury caused by the long hours of standing required of the saleswomen in this city, the one position most calculated to cause the manifold diseases peculiar to their sex, and direfully does Nature punish the disobedience of her laws.”

    Origins Annie Murphy Paul 2010

  • When she entered he looked up, frowning direfully.

    Antony and Cleopatra Colleen McCullough 2007

  • When she entered he looked up, frowning direfully.

    Antony and Cleopatra Colleen McCullough 2007

  • And if it were ever consolatory to know this, or the like of this, it was consolatory then, when the impotence of his will, the instability of his hopes, the feebleness of wealth, had been so direfully impressed upon him.

    Dombey and Son 2007

  • But nevertheless, traveller as he was, he passed the night direfully sick in his carriage, where his courier tended him with brandy-and-water and every luxury.

    Vanity Fair 2006

  • I do not have Hebrew, but my understanding is that the OT is more direfully condemnatory.

    Any sympathy for the gay evangelicals? Ann Althouse 2006

  • Glanced over her shoulder, struggled to frown direfully.

    The Ideal Bride Laurens, Stephanie 2004

  • Frowning direfully, she viciously decapitated another shriveled set of blooms.

    The Ideal Bride Laurens, Stephanie 2004

  • Gerhardt was still in a direfully angry and outraged mood.

    Jennie Gerhardt 2004

  • The Hammal, direfully wrath, threatened to shoot him upon the spot, and it was not without difficulty that I calmed the storm.

    First footsteps in East Africa 2003

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