(superl.) Evil in great degree; dreadful; dismal; horrible; terrible; lamentable.
Example Sentences:
(1) Why is it so surprising to people that a boy like Chol, just out of conflict, has thought through the needs of his country in such a detailed way?” While Beah’s zeal is laudable, the situation in South Sudan is dire .
(2) It is that beautiful moment when the original Metamorphosis is destroyed so that it can be refashioned for a global community of readers in dire need of new forms of storytelling.
(3) In this investigation, reanalysis of responses to case vignettes obtained from 436 psychologists, psychiatrists, and internists revealed that on the issue of confidentiality management, these health care providers discriminate among cases involving: Premeditated harm to others, socially irresponsible acts with possible dire consequences to self or others, and minor theft.
(4) The report’s concluding chapters raised dire warning that the operations of contemporary child protection agencies were replicating many of the destructive dynamics of the Stolen Generations era.
(5) Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, warned Barack Obama in public remarks this month that history had shown “sacrificing our right to privacy can have dire consequences”.
(6) Algeria had not scored a World Cup goal since they drew 1-1 with Northern Ireland at Mexico 1986, a run that took in five matches, including that dire 0-0 draw with England in Cape Town four years ago.
(7) Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics, the author of the influential Stern Report into the economics of climate change for the Treasury in 2006, warned that if the pattern continued, the results would be dire.
(8) High among the range of issues was the media dominance of the Globo group (whose journalists were chased away from demonstrations by an irate mob), inefficient use of public funds, forced relocations linked to Olympic real estate developments, the treatment of indigenous groups, dire inequality and excessive use of force by police in favela communities.
(9) Burrows had resigned as governor of Bank of Ireland, leaving the lender in dire straits, with big losses and mounting debt threatening its very survival.
(10) Yet the inability to get on in life is a now a major and growing problem for middle-class children and this group is in dire need of attention, it is expected to report.
(11) Vince Cable, their shadow chancellor, said: "The Liberal Democrats welcome the government's recognition that radical action is now needed, reflecting the dire and deteriorating position of the UK economy.
(12) Its willingness to ignore diplomatic convention and use its Kuala Lumpur embassy to conduct an extraterritorial assassination will be seen as setting a dire precedent that cannot be allowed to stand.
(13) What is clear, however, is that the reported escalation in fighting exacerbates the already dire humanitarian and human rights situation and the suffering of the Yemeni people,” said Ban’s spokesman, Farhan Haq.
(14) In a scene of young soldiers at rest for a few minutes at the front, he takes us into their heads: one full of dire forebodings, another singing, one trying to identify a bird on a tree – soldiers dreaming of girls’ breasts, dogs, sausages and poetry.
(15) Despite its own dire predictions on the potential impact of climate change , the government's impact assessment for Flood Re does not take account of " changing flood risk due to deterioration of existing flood defences [or] climate change".
(16) The situation is so dire the National Audit Office has warned that by 2020 schools will be worse funded than at any time since the mid-90s.
(17) John Macgregor, an aid worker who has been accompanying teams delivering food and water to Battambang, described the area as a vast inland sea where conditions are dire and malnutrition is common.
(18) But they are also the stuff of nightmares, because if an electricity grid is overwhelmed by demand, the consequences can be dire, as India discovered recently , when more than 700 million people were left without power.
(19) Thousands of jobs that would have been created will be lost and the knock-on effect will be so dire.
(20) While big businesses have enjoyed access to new couriers, Royal Mail itself eventually reached such a dire state that the Hooper report urged the government to rewrite the law to clarify that competition was a mixed blessing.
Dirge
Definition:
(a.) A piece of music of a mournful character, to accompany funeral rites; a funeral hymn.
Example Sentences:
(1) His wink-wink, nod-nod racist slogan, “Make America great again,” together with his apocalyptic dirge of a convention, left exposed and unguarded a flank that is usually the Republicans’ specialty.
(2) In some establishments, mournful dirges played while coffins were carried through the crowds of drinkers; in others, the walls were hung with black crepe.
(3) The band appear to be playing several verses of the English dirge.
(4) There is, it seems, a political divide in CBeebies appreciation, judging by a recent Spectator article entitled “ Agitprop for Toddlers ” in which the author compared a wildlife programme on the channel, in which “a rainbow nation of children [march] around the British countryside singing ‘Let’s make sure we recycle every day’”, to “one of those Dear Leader dirges you see in North Korea”.
(5) As Claudius said in Hamlet: “With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage.” Weddings, to me, feel heavy with expectation, pregnant with emotion, saturated with hope, fear and hard-to-keep promises.
(6) This dirge of a ballad is performed by a woman whose facial expression befits someone burying their pet dog.
(7) Due to an editing error, the quote, “With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage”, was misattributed to Hamlet.
(8) The dirge can be kept for British sport such as the Olympics, Andy Murray doing well and the ones where you sit down."
(9) Such legislation would be a royal pain the arse in the UK, our dirge leading to a spike in suicide rates around tea-time.
(10) Today I see England as a continuum, with football yobs at one end and Eton yobs at the other, and Morrissey dirging about lost seaside resorts somewhere in the middle.
(11) "That is the mother of all dirges, but I'm not too keen on Flower of Scotland either.
(12) Across the internet, thousands of music fans looking for Thicke's raunchy, cowbell-stoked summer jam stumbled instead on a recording of Beckwith's sombre dirge , released on the 2010 CD Jalsaghar .
(13) The Danish one is a bit of a dirge and should really only be used as the closing credits of a lunchtime documentary on some shortwave radio station.
(14) FIFA games aren’t exactly known for hilarity, so these shows are a very welcome change of tone from the brain-breaking Europop dirge found in EA’s club football game year after year.
(15) Japan's is bloody miserable, to tell the truth, the sort of dirge you'd expect to hear pinging off the walls of a church in the Outer Hebridies.
(16) These are the poems: "Burbank," "Gerontion," "Sweeney Among the Nightingales," "A Cooking Egg," and the posthumously published "Dirge".
(17) BECAUSE WHEN PEOPLE HEAR THE CAN-DO OPTIMISM OF THE YES CAMPAIGN UP AGAINST THE CAN’T-DO DIRGE OF THE NO CAMPAIGN THEN THEY CHOOSE YES.
(18) A Hague speech became a Foreign Office dirge, awash in wars on terror, wars on want, wars on rape and a world of “unacceptable” regimes.
(19) 9.49pm GMT “Six priests wailed an a cappella dirge as the open funeral casket was carried through the assembled throng and brought to the stage at Independence Square,” begins Shaun Walker’s (@ ShaunWalker7 ) dispatch from Kiev today: The body, wrapped in a white cloth with just the head visible, was that of just one of at least 77 people to have died this week in Kiev, but its arrival pricked thousands of eyes with tears, as the huge crowds that had gathered bowed their heads in prayer.
(20) There are certainly a good many less dirge-like than ours.