Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who dreads, or lives in fear and apprehension.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who fears, or lives in fear.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who dreads.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

dread +‎ -er

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word dreader.

Examples

  • Or might it be that you have been a closet Darwin dreader all along?

    2006 February - Telic Thoughts 2006

  • Or might it be that you have been a closet Darwin dreader all along?

    A mix-up? 2006

  • Sequels are surely dread things, because if they meet with any success something still dreader lurks ahead: a series.

    Archive 2005-08-01 Jenny Davidson 2005

  • Sequels are surely dread things, because if they meet with any success something still dreader lurks ahead: a series.

    A funny essay about novel-writing Jenny Davidson 2005

  • Then he sits on the stairs, rapping with his tail on a board, and his back-aspect was dreader than his front, and a howlet lit in, and screeched at the horns of him.

    Puck of Pook's Hill Rudyard Kipling 1900

  • Then he sits on the stair, rapping with his tail on a board, and his back-aspect was dreader than his front; and a howlet lit in, and screeched at the horns of him.

    Puck of Pook’s Hill Rudyard Kipling 1900

  • But there are worse plagues, deeper griefs, dreader wounds than the physical.

    The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Browning, Elizabeth B 1898

  • But, ah! to dreader things than these our fair young city comes,

    In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses Henry Lawson 1894

  • But not the words nor even the dreader disdain Move me to anger or resenting pain.

    Henry Ossian Flipper The Colored Cadet at West Point Flipper, Henry O 1878

  • The prisoner bowed her head when the sentence had been pronounced, and then said as she rose, and stretched out her hand to Lord Marnell, who came forward and supported her, "I greatly fear, reverend fathers, that your day is yet to come, when you shall receive sentence from a Court whence there is no appeal, and shall be doomed to a dreader fire!"

    Mistress Margery Emily Sarah Holt 1864

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.