Word.ws English Dictionary

penny dreadful

penny dreadful noun: a cheap paperback book, particularly those concerning lurid depictions of crime in the Victorian era.

penny dreadful: a cheap paperback book, particularly those concerning lurid depictions of crime in the Victorian era
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Noun

penny dreadful (plural penny dreadfuls)

  1. A cheap paperback book, particularly those concerning lurid depictions of crime in the Victorian era.
    • They can read the ‘penny dreadful’, but they cannot darn their stockings or mend their shoes.1861 July 29, North American Review
  2. Pulp fiction: stories written in the lurid style of the penny dreadfuls.

Forms of penny dreadful

pluralpenny dreadfuls

Origin of penny dreadful

From its low price and the lower-class British use of dreadful (“sensationalized crime reporting”).

Words formed from penny dreadful

Questions about penny dreadful

What does penny dreadful mean?
Penny dreadful means a cheap paperback book, particularly those concerning lurid depictions of crime in the Victorian era.
What part of speech is penny dreadful?
Penny dreadful is a noun.
What is the plural of penny dreadful?
The plural of penny dreadful is penny dreadfuls.

Words near penny dreadful in the dictionary

  1. penny candy
  2. penny chew
  3. penny chews
  4. penny dog
  5. penny dogs
  6. penny dreadful
  7. penny dreadfuls
  8. penny fall
  9. penny falls
  10. penny farthing
  11. penny farthings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: penny 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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Cite this entry: “penny dreadful.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/penny_dreadful. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.