dreaded
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "dreaded", 7-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "dreaded" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "dreaded" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
dreaded is anEnglishadj. It means: Causing fear, dread, or terror. Pronounced /ˈdɹɛ.dɪd/. Often confused with dreads and dressed.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | dreaded |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /ˈdɹɛ.dɪd/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #18,293 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 8 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for dreaded is 7 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈdɹɛ.dɪd/. Corpus data places it at rank #18,293 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for dreaded, with forms such as "ddreaded", "deraded", and "draeded". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 8 confusable-pair relationships, "dreads", "dressed", "dreamed", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is dreaded, spelled D-R-E-A-D-E-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Causing fear, dread, or terror.
- 2Having or wearing dreadlocks.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddreaded,deraded,draeded,dreadde,dreadded,dreadedd,dreaedd,dredaed,drreaded,rdeaded
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for dreaded
Misspelling Variants of "dreaded"
Frequency rank: #18,293 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter D in our English index: