dreadful
[…]
The verdict
“dreadful” is uncommon German (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency German
- 8
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - fürchterlich, furchtbar, gottserbärmlich, gottsjämmerlich, grässlich, grausam, schrecklich, schauderhaft
Corpus desk
Index DE-dreadful · dreadful · German
dreadful · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "D" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | dreadful |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | […] |
| Letters | 8 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Langschwanz-Rang von „dreadful“ im Deutschen
Rare enough to double-check
dreadful is uncommon German outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective, transcribed […]. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "fürchterlich, furchtbar, gottserbärmlich, gottsjämmerlich, grässlich, grausam, schrecklich, schauderhaft".
dreadful doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No documented word history exists for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct German form is dreadful, spelled D-R-E-A-D-F-U-L.
Definition
- 1fürchterlich, furchtbar, gottserbärmlich, gottsjämmerlich, grässlich, grausam, schrecklich, schauderhaft
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how dreadful appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The monster is dreadful.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.