| 1. | to fear greatly; be in extreme apprehension of: to dread death. |
| 2. | to be reluctant to do, meet, or experience: I dread going to big parties. |
| 3. | Archaic. to hold in respectful awe. |
| 4. | to be in great fear. |
| 5. | terror or apprehension as to something in the future; great fear. |
| 6. | a person or thing dreaded. |
| 7. | dreads, Informal. dreadlocks. |
| 8. | Informal. a person who wears dreadlocks. |
| 9. | Archaic. deep awe or reverence. |
| 10. | greatly feared; frightful; terrible. |
| 11. | held in awe or reverential fear. |

dread (drěd) v. dread·ed, dread·ing, dreads v. tr.
To be very afraid. n.
[Middle English dreden, short for adreden, from Old English adrǣdan, from ondrǣdan, to advise against, fear : ond-, and-, against; see un-2 + rǣdan, to advise; see ar- in Indo-European roots.] |
dread
a fundamental category of existentialism. According to the 19th-century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, dread, or angst, is a desire for what one fears and is central to his conception of original sin. For the 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger, anxiety is one of the distinctive ways through which Dasein (the historical person) is disclosed as a contingent being, and thus anxiety is that through which fear first becomes possible
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