Word.ws English Dictionary

drear

/dɹɪə/US/dɹɪɚ/

drear adjective: dreary.

Adjective

drear (comparative drearer, superlative drearest)

  1. (literary, poetic) Dreary.
    • Earth raised up her head
      From the darkness dread and drear,1794, William Blake, Earth's Answer, lines 1-2
    • I spoke, perplexed by something in the signs
      Of desolation I had seen and heard
      In this drear pilgrimage to ruined shrines:1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

Noun

drear (plural drears)

  1. (obsolete) Gloom; sadness.

drear meaning in Tamil

drear in Tamil

துயரார்ந்த

Synonyms of drear

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of drear

Forms of drear

Adjective
comparativedrearer
superlativedrearest
Noun
pluraldrears
alternative formdreare

Origin of drear

Shortening of dreary.

Back-formation from dreary. Compare greed.

Words formed from drear

Words that rhyme with drear

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about drear

What does drear mean?
Drear means dreary.
What is drear in Tamil?
Drear in Tamil is துயரார்ந்த. See Drear meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is drear?
Drear can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce drear?
Drear is pronounced /dɹɪə/ (UK).

Words near drear in the dictionary

  1. Dreanna
  2. dreap
  3. dreaped
  4. dreaping
  5. dreaps
  6. drear
  7. dreare
  8. drearer
  9. drearest
  10. drearier
  11. drearies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: drear (page history and authors); drear (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-drear.wav.

Cite this entry: “drear.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/drear. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.