adjective
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full of wrath; raging or furious
-
resulting from or expressing wrath
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of wrathful
Middle English word dating back to 1250–1300; see origin at wrath, -ful
Explanation
If you're wrathful, you're absolutely furious, brimming with anger. Enraged gods of many different religions are often described as wrathful. The wrathful kind of anger is so hardcore that it is often reserved for deities and royalty — a wrathful god might cause a flood, and a wrathful queen might scream, “Off with her head!” You can also use this adjective figuratively for something wild and stormy, like the wrathful lashing of rain on the deck of your sailboat. The Old English root of wrathful means "twisted or tormented."
Vocabulary lists containing wrathful
Mad Infinitum: Synonyms for "Angry"
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To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapters 1–11
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Angry
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Nathan Lane was in a tight race with John Lithgow, who won for his ruthlessly uncompromising portrayal of a wrathful and dyspeptic Roald Dahl in Mark Rosenblatt’s “Giant.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 8, 2026
That 1991 platform worried both Washington and many of the island’s voters, who then and now, have shunned any move toward formal independence, fearing a wrathful reaction from Beijing.
From New York Times ● Jan. 12, 2024
This is the embodiment of what linguistics professor George Lakoff called “the wrathful god.”
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 1, 2022
“Despite his belief in sacrifice, renunciation and non-harm, the Mahatma became a wrathful, vengeful god in the tales of his acts, raining feces on a lawyer who defied his call for noncooperation,” Subin writes.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 28, 2022
He had wrathful thoughts about the police who had arrested him, the jailors who kept him here, the system that allowed this.
From "Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
