dire vs horrible

dire

adj
  • Bad in quality, awful, terrible. 

  • Warning of bad consequences: ill-boding; portentous. 

  • Expressing bad consequences: dreadful; dismal. 

  • Requiring action to prevent bad consequences: urgent, pressing. 

horrible

adj
  • Tremendously bad. 

  • Causing horror; terrible; shocking. 

noun
  • A person wearing a comic or grotesque costume in a parade of horribles. 

  • A thing that causes horror; a terrifying thing, particularly a prospective bad consequence asserted as likely to result from an act. 

How often have the words dire and horrible occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )