Other forms: dreaded, dreads, dreading
Dread is heavy fear of something bad you know is coming. A sense of dread, dread the meeting, filled with dread.
It is fear of a known future event rather than of a present danger, which is what separates it from fright. As a verb it takes an object or an -ing form: dread the phone call, dread going. I dread to think is a fixed phrase meaning the thought is too unpleasant to follow. Note dreadful, which has worn down to mean merely bad; and dreadlocks, which is a separate word.
1noundreadHeavy fear of something bad you know is coming.
“He felt a growing sense of dread as results day came closer.”
2verbfearTo fear something that is coming.
“I dread going back to work after the holidays.”
dread is an anticipating fear.
Old English draedan meant to fear greatly. The word has kept its full weight while its own adjective, dreadful, has faded to mean a poor cup of coffee — which is a common fate for adjectives and rare for their nouns.
Proto-West Germanic
*andarādan
Old English
drǣdan — to fear, dread
Middle English
dreden
English, today
dread
Built from
From Middle English dreden, from Old English drǣdan (“to fear, dread”), aphetic form of ondrǣdan (“to fear, dread”), from Proto-West Germanic andarādan, equivalent to Old English and- + rǣdan (whence read); corresponding to an aphesis of earlier adread. Akin to Old Saxon antdrādan, andrādan (“to fear, dread”), Old High German intrātan (“to fear”), Middle High German entrāten (“to fear, dread, frighten”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA