penny dreadful

1. 1.

   a melodramatic paperback novel

   Synonymsdime novel

   Broadernovel

Questions about penny dreadful

What does penny dreadful mean?

penny dreadful means "a melodramatic paperback novel".

What is another word for penny dreadful?

Close synonyms include dime novel. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is penny dreadful a common word?

penny dreadful is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.