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say it: FIR-fuhl
fearful is an adjective meaning "experiencing or showing fear". It is pronounced /ˈfɪɹfəl/ — FIR-fuhl. It carries 5 recorded senses.
causing fear or dread or terror
“the awful war”
“an awful risk”
“dire news”
“a career or vengeance so direful that London was shocked”
“the dread presence of the headmaster”
“polio is no longer the dreaded disease it once was”
“a dreadful storm”
“a fearful howling”
“horrendous explosions shook the city”
“a terrible curse”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for fearful come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.