What's the difference between dreadful and frightful?

Dreadful


Definition:

  • (a.) Full of dread or terror; fearful.
  • (a.) Inspiring dread; impressing great fear; fearful; terrible; as, a dreadful storm.
  • (a.) Inspiring awe or reverence; awful.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Thinking I had the dreaded Norovirus, I rushed home.
  • (2) We should be grateful the School Food Trust has established this now, before we end up falling down a slippery slope back towards the dreaded Turkey Twizzler that Jamie Oliver campaigned to banish," he added.
  • (3) So what should those who have long dreaded this moment do now?
  • (4) Dr Bhambra sustained the most dreadful life-changing injuries during a sustained racist attack on an innocent man, a member of a caring profession.” There was applause from the public gallery as the verdict was returned.
  • (5) Despite a dreadful end to last season, culminating in a 6-1 defeat at Stoke City, FSG are pressing ahead with transfer plans agreed with Rodgers, indicating the manager’s position is safe at the moment.
  • (6) The image of older people, epitomised in the dreadful road sign, is about health and disability, but poverty is an equally defining feature, so we could talk about older people dependent on social security and those who have other sources of income.
  • (7) Panic attacks would overwhelm her periodically and she experienced regular “ scanxiety ” – the feelings of dread that grip patients before new tests.
  • (8) If you are a London commuter dreading tube strike chaos this evening and tomorrow there is an alternative to fighting your way on to overcrowded buses or a long walk.
  • (9) Many clinicians have realised that AIDS is only the most dreadful aspect of HIV infection.
  • (10) I have to say I think Iran are the poorest team I've seen so far – Nigeria were dreadful in that game but you got the sense that at leas they were a half-decent team playing badly.
  • (11) After expressing frustration with Stoke City's style of play, the dreadful standard of the game and the lack of width available on a pitch narrowed to exploit Rory Delap's throw-ins, Tony Mowbray finally realised that a sixth defeat in seven matches might also owe something to West Bromwich Albion's shortcomings.
  • (12) Thus China replaced a state bureaucracy with a similar state bureaucracy under a different name, the USSR replaced the dreaded imperial secret police with an even more dreaded secret police, and so forth.
  • (13) It's unfair to single him out on the basis of a performance in which almost all of his team-mates have been dreadful, but he's been consistently awful throughout this tournament and keeps getting picked.
  • (14) They'll dread the same thing happening again, possibly during an election campaign.
  • (15) Despite his humorous dismissal of the danger, those close to him dreaded the trips, with the archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, admitting: "My heart is in my mouth every time he goes to Nigeria."
  • (16) So Richard arose as himself again, a dreadful apparition cavorting.
  • (17) Try Penny Dreadful Read more Conleth Hill, who plays Machiavellian royal fixer Varys, kept the crowd in stitches.
  • (18) Even after yesterday's dreadful GDP figures , a year on from the financial firestorm, it has become apparent that we are not about to suffer a full rerun of America's Great Depression.
  • (19) CSKA Moscow survive PSV Eindhoven fightback after Seydou Doumbia double Read more Van Gaal, clearly unenthused by the team’s display, cannot have missed another limited performance from Wayne Rooney, most notable for a fairly dreadful shot when Anthony Martial’s quick feet and directness gave him a chance after 20 minutes.
  • (20) Soubry compared nicotine to heroin as she spoke of how she found it difficult to give up smoking because nicotine is a "dreadful substance" that creates a "perverse psychology of smoking".

Frightful


Definition:

  • (a.) Full of fright; affrighted; frightened.
  • (a.) Full of that which causes fright; exciting alarm; impressing terror; shocking; as, a frightful chasm, or tempest; a frightful appearance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This may be one of the mechanisms by which animals under stress prepare their skeletal muscle for exercise as part of the 'fright and flight' reaction.
  • (2) Shares in London fell sharply for a second successive session on Monday as the world's investors took fright at fears of a meltdown in emerging market economies.
  • (3) That hit stocks as investors took fright, because the iPhone is Apple's biggest revenue generator.
  • (4) Roads were poorly developed and unsafe, hygiene was rudimentary, social security virtually inexistent and perinatal and children's mortality frightfully high.
  • (5) But with his claims last time round being over-inflated, it could be a while before his new rivals take fright.
  • (6) Deployed in an attacking central midfield role behind Peter Crouch, Adam excelled, giving Newcastle quite a few early frights with his incisive through-passes and well-timed late runs into the penalty area.
  • (7) Results correspond to previous studies of coping with chronic illness, and suggest that somatization following physical trauma is better explained with reference to personal meaning than to a fright-model as suggested in the post-traumatic stress criteria of the DSM-III-R.
  • (8) There is a frightful row going on at the IUCN over the decision of its executive director Julia Marton-Lefevre last week to side with Britain over the creation of the marine protected area .
  • (9) Just to put this in context, the Guardian has reported that: "Stock markets took fright on Wednesday as fears grew over the health of the global economy and the ongoing European debt crisis.
  • (10) A fright or shock induced toxic secretion (gel) from the epidermis of the Arabian Gulf catfish, Arius thalassinus, exhibits hemolytic activity when tested against red blood cells from many different sources.
  • (11) This essay -- 1) considers probable risks of retreating in fright from the approach which has significantly reduced the morbidity and mortality of surgical operations over the last 100 years, so that we may balance them against the known and putative risks of transfusion.
  • (12) Analysts immediately wiped £2bn off their forecasts for 2011 – which had been at about £6.5bn – after taking fright at the grim outlook for margins.
  • (13) The City took fright after high court judge Mr Justice Vos announced on Friday morning that he planned to manage the four phone-hacking claims filed against Trinity Mirror's newspapers earlier this week.
  • (14) This trend has resulted in extraordinary progress in many aspects of life, though at the same time created a frightfully specialized lifestyle.
  • (15) If international investors took fright, driving up the cost of serving the UK’s £1.5trn in government debt, he would simply order Threadneedle Street to start creating money and buying up gilts.
  • (16) Alfred Hitchcock's 1950 film, Stage Fright , was criticised for what became known as its "lying flashback" – a long flashback about a murder that we later learn is untrue.
  • (17) But analysts were sceptical of how long the campaign could be sustained, given the fright that investors took at the speed and scale of a slump that wiped out up to $4tn in stock market capitalisation.
  • (18) At the time, she felt so humiliated that she became stricken with stage fright.
  • (19) People’s weak appetite for economic risk may not be the result of pure fear, at least not in the sense of an anxiety like stage fright.
  • (20) There was no evident difference in responsiveness between the four groups, though 3 fish with lesions in the regions ventralis pars dorsalis and ventralis pars ventralis gave fright responses to novel stimuli.