Word.ws English Dictionary

dreadfull

dreadfull is the archaic spelling of dreadful.

Meaning of dreadful

Adjective

dreadful (comparative more dreadful, superlative most dreadful)

  1. Genuinely horrific, awful, or alarming; dangerous, risky.
    • "...Aunt Em will surely think something dreadful has happened to me, and that will make her put on mourning..."1900 May 17, L[yman] Frank Baum, chapter 23, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chicago, Ill.; New York, N.Y.: Geo[rge] M[elvin] Hill Co., →OCLC
  2. (excessive) Unpleasant, awful, very bad (also used as an intensifier).
    • Here some... Look dreadful gay in their own sparkling blood.1682, T. Creech's translation of Lucretius, De Natura Rerum, Book II, 52
  3. (obsolete) Awesome, awe-inspiring, causing feelings of reverence.
  4. (obsolete) Scared, afraid, frightened.
    • Shame to the slothful and woe to the weak one.
      Death to the dreadful who turn to flee.
      Blood to the tearing, the talon’d, the beaked one.
      Timor Mortis are We.1958, T[erence] H[anbury] White, chapter VIII, in The Once and Future King, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, book I (The Sword in the Stone)
  5. (obsolete) Timid, easily frightened.
  6. (obsolete) Reverential, full of pious awe.

See all 10 meanings of dreadful

Forms of dreadfull

comparativemore dreadfull
superlativemost dreadfull

Questions about dreadfull

What is dreadfull the archaic spelling of?
Dreadfull is the archaic spelling of dreadful.

Words near dreadfull in the dictionary

  1. dreaders
  2. dreadest
  3. dreadeth
  4. dreadful
  5. dreadfulest
  6. dreadfull
  7. dreadfullest
  8. dreadfully
  9. dreadfulness
  10. dreadfulnesses
  11. dreadfuls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dreadfull (page history and authors); dreadful (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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