dreadful

Questions about dreadful

What is another word for dreadful?

It depends which dreadful you mean. In the sense “causing fear or dread or terror”, the synonyms are awful, dire, direful, dread, dreaded, fearful, fearsome, frightening, horrendous, horrific, terrible. Across all 3 senses there are 15 distinct synonyms, and they are not interchangeable with each other — this page lists them under the sense each one belongs to.

What is the opposite of dreadful?

WordNet records no antonym for dreadful. Antonymy in WordNet is a relation between specific word forms rather than between concepts, so it is recorded only where lexicographers judged the pairing direct. An absence here means none was recorded, not that none can be imagined.

Why are the synonyms for dreadful split into groups?

Because dreadful carries 3 recorded senses and each has its own set of substitutes. A single flat list would put words from unrelated meanings side by side with nothing to tell them apart, which is exactly how a writer picks the wrong one. The grouping comes from WordNet's synsets, not from an editorial judgement of ours.

Does this page cover every sense of dreadful?

It covers the 2 senses that carry a synonym, antonym, broader or narrower term. The remaining 1 sense has none recorded, so it is left off a thesaurus page and shown in full on the word page instead.

Where do the synonyms for dreadful come from?

From Princeton University's WordNet, a lexical database maintained by lexicographers since 1985. A synonym here means a word form that shares a synset with this word — a set of forms interchangeable in one recorded context. Nothing on this page is generated by a language model.

Other views of dreadful

• Full entry for dreadfulAll 3 senses, with examples, usage labels, syllables and pronunciation.
• Rhymes for dreadfulWords matching from the last stressed vowel onward, grouped by syllable count.
• Thesaurus homeHow WordNet synsets work, and the collections built for synonym work.