Dire means extremely serious and urgent. Dire consequences, in dire need, a dire warning.
It appears in a small set of phrases and rarely elsewhere: dire straits, dire consequences, dire warnings, in dire need. In British informal use it also means simply very bad — the food was dire — which is a considerable weakening. Note direly, which almost nobody says; and that dire straits was a fixed phrase for centuries before it was a band.
1adjectivedireExtremely serious and urgent.
“The refugees are in dire need of food and clean water.”
synonyms: grave, desperate
2adjectivebadVery bad, informally.
“The film was dire, so we walked out halfway through.”
dire is a degree of seriousness.
Latin dirus meant fearful or ominous, and it was used of omens rather than of situations. English kept the sense of foreboding, which is why dire warnings sound worse than serious ones.
Latin
dīrus — fearful, ominous
English, today
dire
Borrowed from Latin dīrus (“fearful, ominous”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA