dire

Adjective Satellite

• fraught with extreme danger; nearly hopeless; ; - G.C.Marshall
  • "a dire emergency"
• causing fear or dread or terror
  • "dire news"
  • "a career or vengeance so direful that London was shocked"

Adj

• Warning of bad consequences: ill-boding; portentous.
• Requiring action to prevent bad consequences: urgent, pressing.
• Expressing bad consequences: dreadful; dismal.
• Bad in quality, awful, terrible.
• Ferocious and of intimidating appearance, like a dire wolf.

Adjective

• Extremely serious or urgent; warning of disaster.

Examples

• dire consequences;  to be in dire straits
• dire need (of)
• dire omens
• His dire blunder allowed her to checkmate him with her next move.
• His opponent’s rack looked DIRE, full of only vowels and low-value consonants.

Synonyms

awful, desperate, direful, dread, dreaded, dreadful, fearful, fearsome, frightening, horrendous, horrific, terrible, abysmal, acute, augurous, bad, baleful, bleak, bodeful, boding, brooding, cheerless, chronic, clamant, coarse, comfortless, crap, crummy, crying, dark, depressing, desolate, dire, disagreeable, disastrous, disconsolate, dismal, doleful, dolesome, drear, drearisome, dreary, dreich, exigent, fatal, foreboding, forlorn, foul, gayless, gloomsome, gloomy, gray, grim, hideous, hopeless, horrible, horrid, ill-boding, ill-fated, ill-omened, ill-starred, imperious, inadequate, inauspicate, inauspicious, incompetent, inelegant, inferior, instant, intolerable, joyless, lack-laughter, loathsome, lousy, lugubrious, melancholy, mirthless, miserable, naff, nefastous, negative, no joke, odious, omenic, ominous, pathetic, peak, portentous, presageful, presagious, pressing, pressive, prodigious, rash, rotten, rubbish, saturnine, severe, shitawful, sinister, sloppy, solemn, somber, sombre, spiritless, star-crossed, sullen, sunless, uncheerful, uncheery, unfavorable, unhappy, unmerry, urgent, wintry, woeful

Related Words

voir dire

Anagrams of dire