dire vs frightening

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. 

frightening

adj
  • Awful, terrible, very bad. 

  • Causing fear; of capable of causing fear; scary. 

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