drear
English
Pronunciation
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Etymology 1
Shortening of dreary.
Adjective
drear (comparative drearer, superlative drearest)
- (poetic) Dreary.
- 1794, William Blake, Earth's Answer, lines 1-2
- Earth raised up her head
From the darkness dread and drear,
- Earth raised up her head
- 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night
- I spoke, perplexed by something in the signs
Of desolation I had seen and heard
In this drear pilgrimage to ruined shrines:
- I spoke, perplexed by something in the signs
- 1922, A. E. Housman, Last Poems, XXVIII, lines 1-2
- Now dreary dawns the eastern light,
And fall of eve is drear, [...]
- Now dreary dawns the eastern light,
- 1794, William Blake, Earth's Answer, lines 1-2
Etymology 2
Back-formation from dreary.
Noun
drear (plural drears)
- (obsolete) Gloom; sadness.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, VI.2:
- She thankt him deare / Both for that newes he did to her impart, / And for the courteous care which he did beare / Both to her love and to her selfe in that sad dreare.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, VI.2: