dreaded

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of dread.

   She had always dreaded hospitals, even as a visitor.

   The stylist washed, sectioned and dreaded his hair over two long sessions.

   Note

   One spelling serves the simple past (she dreaded Mondays) and the participle after have or in the passive (a storm long dreaded by the town). What is dreaded can be a noun or an -ing clause: he dreaded telling her. Set before a noun, the same participle becomes the "feared" adjective of the dreaded phone call.

2. 2
   adjective

   Causing people to feel fear, dread, or terror.

   Halfway through the trip, the dashboard lit up with the dreaded check-engine light.

   The dreaded letter from the tax office sat unopened on the table for a week.

   Similardread

   Note

   Its favorite frame is the phrase the dreaded before a familiar nuisance: the dreaded flu, the dreaded Monday meeting. There the fear is half a joke, a wry inflation of an ordinary misery. Without the wink, as in a dreaded disease, it means real fear. Its synonym dread can fill the same slot before a noun.

3. 3
   adjective

   Having dreadlocks, or wearing the hair in them.

   A dreaded surfer with sun-bleached locks waved to us from the water.

   She kept her dreaded hair wrapped in a bright scarf at work.

   Similardreadlocked

   Note

   This adjective comes from the hairdresser's verb: to dread hair is to style it into dreadlocks, and dreaded describes the result or the person wearing it. Because it shares a spelling with the "feared" adjective, a dreaded surfer is ambiguous out of context. When the hair is the point, keep the word near hair or locks, or say with dreadlocks instead.

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