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• s  fraught with extreme danger; nearly hopeless
  a dire emergency
• s  causing fear or dread or terror
  dire news
  a career or vengeance so direful that London was shocked

• Ironically, that dire forecast is wrapped in an improving forecast for nationwide home prices.
• The rest were in dire straits, attacked on one flank by fading revenues, on the other by reformers who think the public schools are undemocratic.
• That situation is hardly, as Giuliani would say, "hopeless and dire.

• desperate
• awful
• direful
• dread
• dreaded
• dreadful
• fearful
• fearsome
• frightening
• horrendous
• horrific
• terrible

News & Articles

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• The Carbon Is Too Damn High
  A new report from the International Energy Agency has a dire warning: Despite our best efforts, we’re putting more and more emissions into the atmosphere It’s not just the percentage of the atmosphere occupied by carbon dioxide that’s reached a high not seen in millions of years (400 ppm, as of May). A new warning put out by the Paris-based International Energy Agency claims that carbon ...
  June 12, 2013 - Fast Company Magazine
• Michigan Senate Acknowledges 'Talk Like A Pirate Day'
  A'vast me fellow matey! Cast aside 'ye dire issues at hand and come aboard! It's time the state of Michigan recognizes what is indeed the most important day of days! Aaargghh, or whatever. Citing reason to give the holiday "the recognition it truly deserves," state Sen. Roger Kahn wore an eye patch Wednesday, stood up at the microphone in the Senate chamber, and offered a resolution for the ...
  June 11, 2013 - Jalopnik
• Syria’s rebel leadership makes new pleas to Washington
  Saying their situation is dire after the loss of a key border town last week, the rebels ask again for weapons.
  June 10, 2013 - Washington Post

Quotes

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• Barack Obama in msnbc.com
  One of the most significant contributors to this recession was a financial crisis as dire as any we've known in generations,Obama said in the historic Great Hall of New York's Cooper Union. "And that crisis was born of a failure of...
• Henry Paulson in guardian.co.uk
  Paulson said that the emphasis in the program was changed in reaction to rapidly moving events as the situation in credit markets "became even more dire."
• Paul Martin in The Associated Press
  Our situation was dire. Canada was in a lot of trouble at that point,Martin said. "If we were going to preserve our health care and our education system we had to do it."