Dreaded

How to spell dreaded

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dreaded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dreaded mean?

1. adjectiveRegarded with great fear or anxious anticipation.
2. verbFelt great fear or anxiety about something expected to happen.

Dreaded in a sentence

• adjective

  The dreaded annual tax return was due at the end of January.

• verb

  He dreaded the long drive home through the storm.

• adjective

  She opened the dreaded letter from the bank with shaking hands.

• verb

  For weeks she dreaded telling her parents about the lost job.

Where does dreaded come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb drǣdan, a shortened form of the longer ondrǣdan, which meant 'to fear' or 'to be in terror of'. The original verb carried the sense of advising or counselling against something dangerous before it narrowed simply to feeling deep fear. By the medieval period the plain form dread had settled into English, and adding the regular past ending -ed produced 'dreaded', meaning either feared in advance or, as an adjective, regarded with fear. The double D in the middle is easy to drop in writing: the root already ends in a D sound, and the suffix supplies a second one, so 'dreaded' keeps both. It belongs to the same broad Germanic family of fear words as the modern German term for fear, and the spelling has stayed remarkably stable for a thousand years.

How the word is built

• dread (Old English drǣdan: to fear greatly)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)