drear

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɹɪə/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /dɹɪɚ/, /dɹɪɹ/
• Rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)

Shortening of dreary.

drear (comparative drearer, superlative drearest)

1. (poetic, literary) Dreary.
   • 1794, William Blake, Earth's Answer, lines 1-2

     Earth raised up her head
     From the darkness dread and drear,

   • 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:

   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     And over all, the dead silence of the dead, the sense of utter loneliness, and the brooding spirit of the Past! How beautiful it was, and yet how drear! We did not dare to speak aloud.

   • 1922, A. E. Housman, Last Poems, XXVIII, lines 1-2:

     Now dreary dawns the eastern light,
     And fall of eve is drear, [...]

Back-formation from dreary.

drear (plural drears)

1. (obsolete) Gloom; sadness.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     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.

• Rader, arder, arred, darer, rared, rear'd, reard