Adjective: drear
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
| Comparative | drearer |
| Superlative | drearest |
Perifrastic
Sample Sentences
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Earth raised up her head
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From the darkness dread and drear, [1794, William Blake, Earth's Answer, lines 1-2]
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I spoke, perplexed by something in the signs
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Of desolation I had seen and heard
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In this drear pilgrimage to ruined shrines: [1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night:]
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And over all, the dead silence of the dead, the sense of utter loneliness, and the brooding spirit of the Past! How beautiful it was, and yet how drear! We did not dare to speak aloud. [1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:]
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Now dreary dawns the eastern light,
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And fall of eve is drear, [...] [1922, A. E. Housman, Last Poems, XXVIII, lines 1-2:]
Adjectives inflected like drear
sallow,
smooth,
slight,
sleigh,
sordid,
somber,
shweet,
shrill,
shrewd,
yellow,
yaller,
hard knock,
DRY,
Greek,
cut short,
unquiet,
unclean,
indiscreet,
chipper,
straicht, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
Shortening of dreary.