Literary notes about dreadful (AI summary)
The term "dreadful" functions as a powerful intensifier in literature, conveying emotions that range from deep terror to profound sorrow and even ironic understatement. It is often used to describe overwhelming situations or sensations—a shock so intense it nearly annihilates the speaker’s resolve [1], or the numbing, physical discomfort of a dreadful cold [2]. At times, it emphasizes imminent disaster, as when characters face nightmarish conditions at sea or in wartime [3, 4], while in other contexts it reveals inner anguish or moral decay, such as feelings of guilt or overwhelming despair [5, 6]. Whether evoking the threatening presence of nature, the weight of impending doom, or the bitter edge of personal suffering, "dreadful" helps to heighten the dramatic tone and emotional stakes within the narrative [7, 8].
- I was too weak to bear ill tidings of any kind; but a shock so dreadful as this, almost annihilated me.
— from Fox's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe - I caught a dreadful cold, but that I did not regard.
— from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen - “Through our own money and our men Shall a dreadful war begin.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay - Yet it was a dreadful night for those on deck.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana - I feel as if there was a dreadful lump in my throat.
— from Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery - I felt as if I was about the commission of a dreadful crime, and avoided with shuddering anxiety any encounter with my fellow-creatures.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - At last his cries were choked by a dreadful fit of coughing; blood gushed from his mouth, and he fell on the ground.
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë - Above all, she dwelt on the agony of separation from all her children on that dreadful auction day.
— from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. Jacobs
