Dreadful

How to spell dreadful

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dreadful

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dreadful mean?

1. adjectiveExtremely bad, unpleasant, or causing great fear or distress.

Dreadful in a sentence

• The hotel room was in a dreadful state when they arrived.

• Traffic was dreadful on the motorway all morning.

Where does dreadful come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the native English verb 'dread', which descends from the Old English 'ondrǣdan', meaning 'to fear greatly' or 'to be in terror of'. The first part of that older verb was a prefix, while the core 'drǣdan' carried the sense of fearing, and over time the prefix dropped away to leave the simple 'dread' we use today. The suffix '-ful' is the same familiar Germanic ending found in 'careful' and 'beautiful', and it originally meant 'full of', so 'dreadful' literally meant 'full of dread', that is, inspiring fear or awe. By the late Middle Ages the word had broadened from genuine terror to the milder, everyday sense of 'very bad' or 'unpleasant' that dominates modern use. A useful spelling reminder is that '-ful' as a suffix always takes a single 'l', even though the standalone word 'full' has two.

How the word is built

• dread (fear, terror)
• -ful (full of)