Dreadful means extremely bad or unpleasant. Dreadful weather, a dreadful mistake, the food was dreadful.
In British English it is a very common everyday complaint word, weaker than it looks — dreadful weather is simply bad weather. Used of something serious it recovers its weight: a dreadful accident. Note dreadfully, which works both as very — dreadfully sorry — and as badly: he sang dreadfully. And penny dreadful, the Victorian name for a cheap sensational magazine, which is where the phrase comes from.
1adjectivedreadfulExtremely bad or unpleasant.
“The weather was dreadful for the whole fortnight.”
dreadful is a quality of badness.
Also accepted in games: awful
Dread is Old English draedan, to fear greatly, and dreadful originally meant full of dread — inspiring terror. Like awful and terrible, it has been worn down by everyday use into a word for a poor meal.
Middle English
dredful
English, today
dreadful
From Middle English dredful, dredfull, dredeful (also dreful). by surface analysis, en + dread + ful.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA