Dictionary Definition
dire 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]
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, direful, dread(a), dreaded, dreadful, fearful, fearsome, frightening, horrendous, horrific, terrible]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Etymology
From etyl la dirus.Adjective
- Ill-boding; portentous; as, dire omens.
- Evil in great degree; dreadful; dismal; horrible; terrible; lamentable.
Quotations
- Dire was the tossing, deep the groans. — John Milton, Paradise Lost, line 9858.
- Gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire. — John Milton, Paradise Lost, line 1464.
Related terms
Translations
Evil in great degree
Anagrams
French
Etymology
Latin dicereVerb
direItalian
Etymology
from dicereVerb
direConjugation
Extensive Definition
As a location, Dire may refer to:
- Diré, Mali
- Dire (woreda) – one of the 180 woredas in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia.
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
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