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• n  a quality of extreme unpleasantness

• Muttered Cadet Wade Schieber, a West Point third-year man assigned to summer border-patrol duty: "It's hard to imagine the dreadfulness of this until you see it.
• The reason, he eventually grasps, is that guilt and horror offer the only way to protect human dignity from the dreadfulness of chance.

• awfulness
• horridness
• terribleness

Quotes

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• Adam Roberts in Independent
  Adam Roberts, author of Dr Whom and a professor of literature at London University, said: "I'm impressed at her ability to intuit the dreadfulness of Dr Whom without having read it. It might be that the point of parody is not whether it's original...