dreadful vs offensive

dreadful

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

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

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. 

adv
  • Dreadfully. 

offensive

adj
  • Causing offense; arousing a visceral reaction of disgust, anger, hatred, or indignation. 

  • Relating to an offense or attack, as opposed to defensive. 

  • Having to do with play directed at scoring. 

noun
  • An attack. 

  • The posture of attacking or being able to attack. 

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