drear

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɹɪə/

Shortening of dreary.

drear (comparative drearer, superlative drearest)

1. (poetic) Dreary.
   • 1794, William Blake, Earth's Answer, lines 1-2

     Earth raised up her head
     From the darkness dread and drear,

   • 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

     I spoke, perplexed by something in the signs
     Of desolation I had seen and heard
     In this drear pilgrimage to ruined shrines:

   • 1922, A. E. Housman, Last Poems, XXVIII, lines 1-2

     Now dreary dawns the eastern light,
     And fall of eve is drear, [...]

Back-formation from dreary.

drear (plural drears)

1. (obsolete) Gloom; sadness.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, VI.2:

     She thankt him deare / Both for that newes he did to her impart, / And for the courteous care which he did beare / Both to her love and to her selfe in that sad dreare.

• Rader, arred, darer, rared, rear'd, reard