Adjacent Words

Dire definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

DIRE, a. [L.] Dreadful; dismal; horrible; terrible; evil in a great degree.
Dire was the tossing, deep the groans.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: fraught with extreme danger; nearly hopeless; "a desperate illness"; "on all fronts the Allies were in a desperate situation due to lack of materiel"- G.C.Marshall; "a dire emergency" [syn: desperate, dire]
2: causing fear or dread or terror; "the awful war"; "an awful risk"; "dire news"; "a career or vengeance so direful that London was shocked"; "the dread presence of the headmaster"; "polio is no longer the dreaded disease it once was"; "a dreadful storm"; "a fearful howling"; "horrendous explosions shook the city"; "a terrible curse" [syn: awful, dire, direful, dread, dreaded, dreadful, fearful, fearsome, frightening, horrendous, horrific, terrible]

Merriam Webster's

adjective (direr; direst) Etymology: Latin dirus; akin to Greek deinos terrifying, Sanskrit dve??i he hates Date: 1565 1. a. exciting horror <dire suffering> b. dismal, oppressive <dire days> 2. warning of disaster <a dire forecast> 3. a. desperately urgent <dire need> b. extreme <dire poverty> • direly adverb • direness noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 a calamitous, dreadful (in dire straits). b ominous (dire warnings). 2 urgent (in dire need). Derivatives: direly adv. direness n. Etymology: L dirus

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Dire Dire, a. [Compar. Direr; superl. Direst.] [L. dirus; of uncertain origin.] 1. Ill-boding; portentous; as, dire omens. 2. Evil in great degree; dreadful; dismal; horrible; terrible; lamentable. Dire was the tossing, deep the groans. --Milton. Gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire. --Milton.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. Dire is used to emphasize how serious or terrible a situation or event is. A government split would have dire consequences for domestic peace... He was in dire need of hospital treatment. = awful, desperate ADJ: usu ADJ n [emphasis] 2. If you describe something as dire, you are emphasizing that it is of very low quality. (INFORMAL) ADJ: usu v-link ADJ [emphasis]

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. Dreadful, dismal, fearful, direful, shocking, terrible, horrid, horrible, awful, terrific, tremendous, portentous, gloomy, woful, disastrous, calamitous, destructive, cruel, inexorable, implacable.

Moby Thesaurus

abominable, apocalyptic, appalling, arrant, astounding, atrocious, awe-inspiring, awesome, awful, bad, badly off, baleful, baneful, base, beastly, beneath contempt, black, blameworthy, bodeful, boding, brutal, burning, calamitous, cataclysmal, cataclysmic, catastrophic, clamant, clamorous, climacteric, contemptible, critical, crucial, crying, dark, deplorable, depressed, depressing, desperate, despicable, destructive, detestable, direful, disastrous, disgusting, distressing, donsie, doomful, dread, dreaded, dreadful, dreary, egregious, enormous, evil, evil-starred, exigent, fatal, fateful, fell, fetid, filthy, flagrant, foreboding, formidable, fortuneless, foul, frightful, fulsome, funest, ghastly, ghoulish, gloomy, grievous, grim, grisly, gross, gruesome, hapless, hateful, heartbreaking, heinous, hideous, horrendous, horrible, horrid, horrific, horrifying, ill, ill off, ill-boding, ill-fated, ill-omened, ill-starred, imperative, importunate, in adverse circumstances, inauspicious, infamous, instant, lamentable, loathsome, lousy, lowering, luckless, macabre, menacing, monstrous, morbid, nasty, nefarious, noisome, notorious, obnoxious, odious, of evil portent, offensive, ominous, out of luck, outrageous, pitiable, pitiful, planet-struck, portending, portentous, rank, redoubtable, regrettable, reprehensible, repulsive, rotten, ruinous, sad, scandalous, schlock, schrecklich, scurvy, shabby, shameful, shocking, shoddy, short of luck, sinister, somber, sordid, squalid, star-crossed, terrible, terrific, threatening, too bad, tragic, tremendous, unblessed, unclean, underprivileged, unfavorable, unfortunate, unhappy, unlucky, unpromising, unpropitious, unprosperous, unprovidential, unspeakable, untoward, urgent, vile, villainous, woeful, worst, worthless, wreckful, wretched