Dread, n.
1. Great fear in view of impending evil; fearful apprehension of danger; anticipatory terror. The secret dread of divine displeasure. Tillotson. The dread of something after death. Shak.
2. Reverential or respectful fear; awe. The fear of you, and the dread of you, shall be upon every beast of the earth. Gen. ix. 2. His scepter shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings. Shak.
3. An object of terrified apprehension.
4. A person highly revered. [Obs.] "Una, his dear dread." Spenser.
3 more senses
5. Fury; dreadfulness. [Obs.] Spenser.
6. Doubt; as, out of dread. [Obs.] Chaucer.
Syn. -- Awe; fear; affright; terror; horror; dismay; apprehension. See Reverence.
3 other Webster entries under this spelling
Dread, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Dreaded; p. pr. & vb. n. Dreading.]
To fear in a great degree; to regard, or look forward to, with terrific apprehension. When at length the moment dreaded through so many years came close, the dark cloud passed away from Johnson's mind. Macaulay.
Dread, v. i.
To be in dread, or great fear. Dread not, neither be afraid of them. Deut. i. 29.
Dread, a.
1. Exciting great fear or apprehension; causing terror; frightful; dreadful. A dread eternity! how surely mine. Young.
2. Inspiring with reverential fear; awful' venerable; as, dread sovereign; dread majesty; dread tribunal.
Shades of meaning
Fernald has no entry of its own for dread; he lists it under alarm, anxiety, awful, fear, veneration.
Where he writes about it:
Apprehension, disquietude, dread, misgiving, and solicitude are in anticipation of danger; consternation, dismay, and terror are overwhelming fear, generally in the actual presence of that which is terrible, though these words also may have an anticipative force. — from alarm
Anxiety refers to some future event, always suggesting hopeful possibility, and thus differing from apprehension, fear, dread, foreboding, terror, all of which may be quite despairing. — from anxiety
Foreboding, dread, etc., commonly incapacitate for all helpful thought or endeavor. — from anxiety
Fear is the generic term denoting an emotion excited by threatening evil with a desire to avoid or escape it; fear may be sudden or lingering, in view of present, of imminent, or of distant and only possible danger; in the latter sense dread is oftener used. — from fear
Dread is a shrinking apprehension or expectation of possible harm awakened by any one of many objects or causes, from that which is overwhelmingly vast and mighty to that which is productive of momentary physical pain; in its higher uses dread approaches the meaning of awe, but with more of chilliness and cowering, and without that subjection of soul to the grandeur and worthiness of the object that is involved in awe. — from veneration
Awe is preoccupied with the object that inspires it; dread with apprehension of personal consequences. — from veneration
Reverence and veneration are less overwhelming than awe or dread, and suggest something of esteem, affection, and personal nearness. — from veneration