dramatic

• dramatick

Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek δρᾱμᾰτῐκός (drāmătĭkós), from δρᾶμα (drâma) + -τικός (-tikós). By surface analysis, drama +‎ -tic.

• IPA^(key): /dɹəˈmætɪk/

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dramatic (comparative more dramatic, superlative most dramatic)

1. Of or relating to the drama.
   • 1911, “Music”, in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:

     Monteverde found the conditions of dramatic music more favourable to his experiments than those of choral music, in which both voices and ears are at their highest sensibility to discord.

   • 1924, Herbert Weir Smyth, “VI. Orestea. I: Agamemnon”, in Aeschylean Tragedy, page 151:

     The Orestea is in effect one great single tragedy in three separate parts, each with its own dramatic purpose, yet harmonized by a common inspiration—three great acts of a drama, simple but complex; the whole, as its component members, showing unity of action in rise, crisis, and fall, and progressing in a series of like orderly stages toward a definite dramatic goal.

2. Striking in appearance or effect.

   a dramatic view of the Alps

   • 1986, Ronald Reagan, Proclamation 5430:

     Each year remarkable advances in prenatal medicine bring ever more dramatic confirmation of what common sense told us all along-that the child in the womb is simply what each of us once was: a very young, very small, dependent, vulnerable member of the human family.

   • 2013 August 17, “Best and brightest”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8849:

     Poland has made some dramatic gains in education in the past decade.

   • 2025 March 13, Kaanita Iyer, “Johns Hopkins laying off more than 2,000 workers after dramatic cut in USAID funding”, in edition.cnn.com‎^[1]:

     Johns Hopkins laying off more than 2,000 workers after dramatic cut in USAID funding […] Daniels warned in the message that the dramatic cut in USAID funding will result in “impacts to budgets, personnel, and programs.”

3. Having a powerful, expressive singing voice.
4. (informal) Tending to exaggerate in order to get attention.

   You're not bleeding out; the knife barely scratched your skin. Stop being so dramatic!

• → Japanese: ドラマティック (doramatikku)

• Raymond Williams (1983), “Dramatic”, in Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, revised American edition, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, published 1985, →ISBN, page 109.

Borrowed from French dramatique, from Latin dramaticus. Equivalent to dramă +‎ -atic.

• IPA^(key): /draˈma.tik/

dramatic m or n (feminine singular dramatică, masculine plural dramatici, feminine/neuter plural dramatice)

1. dramatic

• “dramatic”, in DEX online—Dicționare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language) (in Romanian), 2004–2026