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Full of dread or terror; fearful. [Obs.] "With dreadful heart." Chaucer.

In a dreadful manner; terribly. Dryden.

The quality of being dreadful.

Coming; any important arrival; approach. Death's dreadful advent. Young. Expecting still his advent home. Tennyson.

One who practices some mechanic art or craft; an artisan. [Obs.] How to build ships, and dreadful ordnance cast, Instruct the articles and reward their. Waller.

The overpowering emotion excited when something unaccountable, wonderful, or dreadful is presented to the mind; an intense degree of surprise; amazement. Lest the place And my quaint habits breed astonishment. Milton.

The emotion inspired by something dreadful and sublime; an undefined sense of the dreadful and the sublime; reverential fear, or solemn wonder; profound reverence. There is an awe in mortals' joy, A deep mysterious fear. Keble. To tame the pride of that power which held the Continent in awe. Macaulay. The solitude of t…

The quality of striking with awe, or with reverence; dreadfulness; solemnity; as, the awfulness of this sacred place. The awfulness of grandeur. Johnson.

To extend over and beyond the base or support; to overhang; to jut. To the dreadful summit of the cliff That beetles o'er his base into the sea. Shak. Each beetling rampart, and each tower sublime. Wordsworth.

To burst. [Obs.] And both his yën braste out of his face. Chaucer. Dreadfull furies which their chains have brast. Spenser.

The act of slaughtering; the act of killing cruelly and needlessly. That dreadful butchering of one another. Addison.

The thing thrown. A cast of dreadful dust. Dryden.

an; vile; despicable. Milton. The arguments of tyranny are ascontemptible as its force is dreadful. Burke.

l together; to summon to meet; to assemble by summons. There remained no resource but the dreadful one of convoking a parliament. palfrey.

; humidity; fog; fogginess; vapor. Night . . . with black air Accompanied, with damps and dreadful gloom. Milton.

Secret; lonely; solitary; dreadful. [Obs.] Shak. -- Dearn"ly, adv. [Obs.] Chaucer.

Anything so dreadful as to be like death. It was death to them to think of entertaining such doctrines. Atterbury. And urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death. Judg. xvi. 16.

ffer; to decline a contest; he declined any participation with them. Could I Decline this dreadful hour Massinger.

Evil in great degree; dreadful; dismal; horrible; terrible; lamentable. Dire was the tossing, deep the groans. Milton. Gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire. Milton.

Dire; dreadful; terrible; calamitous; woeful; as, a direful fiend; a direful day. -- Dire"ful*ly, adv. -- Dire"ful*ness, n.