dreadful vs fearful

dreadful

adv
  • Dreadfully. 

noun
  • A shocking or sensational crime. 

  • A journal or broadsheet printing such reports. 

  • A shocker: a report of a crime written in a provokingly lurid style. 

adj
  • Genuinely horrific, awful, or alarming; dangerous, risky. 

  • Unpleasant, awful, very bad (also used as an intensifier). 

fearful

adv
  • Extremely; fearfully. 

adj
  • Frightening; causing fear. 

  • Tending to fear; timid. 

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