adjective (especially BrE)
1 very bad or unpleasant:
What dreadful weather! * What a dreadful thing to say! * It's dreadful the way they treat their staff. * How dreadful! * Jane looked dreadful (= looked ill or tired).
2 [onlybeforenoun] used to emphasize how bad sth is:
He's a dreadful snob. * She's making a dreadful mess of things. * I'm afraid there's been a dreadful mistake.
3 [usuallybeforenoun] causing fear or suffering:
a dreadful accident / disease / scream * They suffered dreadful injuries.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for dreadful is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does dreadful appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — dreadful appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
