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Definition of "dread" []

  • To be in terror of. (verb-transitive)
  • To anticipate with alarm, distaste, or reluctance: dreaded the long drive home. (verb-transitive)
  • Archaic To hold in awe or reverence. (verb-transitive)
  • To be very afraid. (verb-intransitive)
  • Profound fear; terror. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "dread" in a sentence
  • "This sucks and really waiting in dread is so crushing to a mother."
  • "Our own Hemingway wrote so much grandiose nonsense about this so-called sport that the reader feels a certain dread as the climactic spectacle approaches — a dread heightened by the awareness that Montherlant was a matador in his teenage years."
  • "She could be intensely cold-hearted towards enemies, and her children lived in dread of disappointing her."