DREADFUL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does dreadful mean? 

• DREADFUL (adjective)
  The adjective DREADFUL has 3 senses:

1. causing fear or dread or terror

2. exceptionally bad or displeasing

3. extremely disagreeable and unpleasant

  Familiarity information: DREADFUL used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DREADFUL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Causing fear or dread or terror

Synonyms:

awful; dire; direful; dread; dreaded; dreadful; fearful; fearsome; frightening; horrendous; horrific; terrible

Context example:

a terrible curse

Similar:

alarming (frightening because of an awareness of danger)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Exceptionally bad or displeasing

Synonyms:

abominable; atrocious; awful; dreadful; painful; terrible; unspeakable

Context example:

an unspeakable odor came sweeping into the room

Similar:

bad (having undesirable or negative qualities)

Derivation:

dreadfulness (a quality of extreme unpleasantness)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Extremely disagreeable and unpleasant

Context example:

don't go out, the weather is dreadful

Similar:

disagreeable (not to your liking)

Derivation:

dreadfulness (a quality of extreme unpleasantness)

 Context examples 

The night before last was a dreadful one at sea.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

This was all so strange and uncanny that a dreadful fear came upon me, and I was afraid to speak or move.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

“I hope it will not be too dreadful a hardship for you to make yourself a dress or two.”

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Here's a carriage full of people, a tall lady, a little girl, and two dreadful boys.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

To-morrow it will be but a dreadful memory.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Above, the bodies of the dead and the dying—French, Spanish, and Aragonese—lay thick and thicker, until they covered the whole ground two and three deep in one dreadful tangle of slaughter.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He was in dreadful earnest and made me swear, with my hands on the Testament, that whatever happened I would always be true to him.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They kept close to the door and closer to one another, for the stillness of the empty room was more dreadful than any of the forms they had seen Oz take.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

“Mother,” said the boy, “how dreadful you look! Yes, give me an apple.”

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

The life of my father is in the greatest danger, owing to the dreadful circumstance that I have related.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)