Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To be in terror of.
- v. To anticipate with alarm, distaste, or reluctance: dreaded the long drive home.
- v. Archaic To hold in awe or reverence.
- v. To be very afraid.
- n. Profound fear; terror.
- n. Fearful or distasteful anticipation. See Synonyms at fear.
- n. An object of fear, awe, or reverence.
- n. Archaic Awe; reverence.
- adj. Causing terror or fear: a dread disease.
- adj. Inspiring awe: the dread presence of the headmaster.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To fear in a great degree; be in shrinking apprehension or expectation of: used chiefly with reference to the future: as, to dread death.
- To cause to fear; alarm; frighten.
- To venerate; hold in respectful awe.
- To be in great fear, especially of something which may come to pass.
- n. Great fear or apprehension; tremulous anticipation of or repugnance to the happening of something: as, the dread of evil; the dread of suffering; the dread of the divine displeasure.
- n. Awe; fear united with respect; terror.
- n. A cause or object of apprehension; the person or the thing dreaded.
- n. Doubt.
- Dreaded; such as to excite great fear or apprehension; terrible; frightful.
- That is to be dreaded or feared; awful; solemn; venerable: as, dread sovereign; a dread tribunal.
Wiktionary
- v. To fear greatly.
- v. To anticipate with fear.
- n. A great fear.
- n. Somebody or something dreaded.
- n. A Rastafarian.
- n. dreadlock
- adj. Terrible; greatly feared.
- adj. archaic Awe-inspiring; held in fearful awe.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To fear in a great degree; to regard, or look forward to, with terrific apprehension.
- v. To be in dread, or great fear.
- n. Great fear in view of impending evil; fearful apprehension of danger; anticipatory terror.
- n. Reverential or respectful fear; awe.
- n. An object of terrified apprehension.
- n. obsolete A person highly revered.
- n. obsolete Fury; dreadfulness.
- n. obsolete Doubt.
- adj. Exciting great fear or apprehension; causing terror; frightful; dreadful.
- adj. Inspiring with reverential fear; awful' venerable
WordNet 3.0
- adj. causing fear or dread or terror
- v. be afraid or scared of; be frightened of
- n. fearful expectation or anticipation
Etymologies
- Middle English dreden, from Old English drǣdan ("to fear, caution against"), aphetic form of ādrǣdan, ondrǣdan ("to advise or counsel against"); compare with Dutch ontraden ("to advise or counsel against"), from and- ("against") + rǣdan ("to counsel, advise"). Akin to Old High German intrātan ("to fear"). More at read. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English dreden, short for adreden, from Old English adrǣdan, from ondrǣdan, to advise against, fear : ond-, and-, against; see un-2 + rǣdan, to advise; see ar- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“This sucks and really waiting in dread is so crushing to a mother.”
“Our own Hemingway wrote so much grandiose nonsense about this so-called sport that the reader feels a certain dread as the climactic spectacle approaches — a dread heightened by the awareness that Montherlant was a matador in his teenage years.”
“She could be intensely cold-hearted towards enemies, and her children lived in dread of disappointing her.”
“Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness for ever.”
“While the seamen, pointing fingers, shrink in dread, and cry, 'Turn back!”
“Then the Master, stalking forward where the murderer shrinks in dread,”
“But just like the unhappy parents, we watched in dread as the majority of voters, cheered on by the mainstream media, went ahead and married him anyway.”
“We the millions of uninsured Americans & others who cannot afford health insurance might as well go to some other planet or continue to live in dread of getting ill.”
“Our dread is to guard your poise, and to avoid intruding.”
“My dread is that the thought police will not be far behind.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘dread’.
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Anxiety
apprehension =wor..., regularity, dread, brood, palpitation, gradual, troublesome, virtually, irrational=unreas..., phobia=irrational..., phobic=fearful= adj, affiliated=united and 54 more...
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Sorrow is better than laughter; for b...
lachrymose, melancholic, sorrow, wail, mournful, sob, misery, wretchedness, anguish, agony, heartbreak, lament and 38 more...
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Words That Can Be Typed Entirely With...
Words made of the following: qwertasdfgzxcvb. I've stood on the shoulders of giants... users mollusque and reesetee made similar lists before I even existed on Wordnik. :)
stewardesses, red tea, waves, axes, wrest, qat, waver, created, dressed, stress, crater, vexes and 50 more...
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Words from books I've read
These are some words I didn't know when I read and now I want to know!
mortgage, fiddling, rage, kick, stroke, dodge, hunch, scratch, covetous, rank, trickle, budget and 179 more...
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What's That Pokémon Name?
Words used to create the names of Pokémon, which are usually portmanteaux.
bulb, dinosaur, ivy, venus, char, salamander, squirt, turtle, blast, tortoise, water, caterpillar and 525 more...
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writing first chapter
revolve, vital, necessity, depict, archery, indegenous, native, lacrosse, similarly, recess, composition, indicator and 91 more...
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GCI
spinster, maiden, happy-go-lucky, homonym, ill-at-ease, saw red, out of sorts, hot under the collar, taken aback, pen-names, alias, shoelaces and 378 more...
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words unknown
repeat!!!
laissez faire, propensity, punitive, explicit, whim, extenuating, distort, gross, grossly, hearsay, dispel, apprehensive and 113 more...
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Vampire Words
Words that make me think of Vampire: The Requiem
torpor, torpid, amaranth, vitae, embrace, ventrue, toreador, masquerade, dominate, nightmare, majesty, dread and 103 more...
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gcherches's Words
serendipity, roadrunner, inner child, coagulant, esquire, vicissitude, idiot savant, mitigation, affirmation, affirmative, diatribe, affirmative action and 185 more...
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to acquire
moustache, thoughtcrime, lift, overall, razor, strength, oily, gin, oily gin, brotherhood, dull, toward and 108 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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fifi
verbs Adj Adv noun
indulge, convene, solve, dissolve, prospect, prospective, allege, resolve, accountable, administration, amid, agenda and 407 more...
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ff
attribute, sticking, distinct, perseverance, trend, clarify, avoidant, ambivalent, disoriented, cling, prompting, appositive and 94 more...
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kmalladi's favorites
edification, penchant, ablution, extricate, frank, triumvirate, trifecta, egregious, hoi polloi, articulate, antediluvian, brusque and 291 more...
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Dain's Words
rabble, terminus, archaic, atavism, demiurge, waylay, syzygy, jocoserious, quark, entropy, cinnabar, shamble and 912 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for dread.
fbharjo dread to advise (put together words) against OR d read Jan 22, 2007