Finally, is anyone else struck by the dreadful irony of Djokovic being hoisted by his own petard in the matter of the pre-serve ball bounce?

There is a dreadful irony in the thought that war, the destroyer of men, finally changed man into a beastlike creature.

'Dear God, what dreadful irony that I should call on you for help!'

And only now, with dreadful irony, came Takvi's report, "Weapons powered up."

Curious that the French could see no contradiction in the two objects, Ramage thought; the dreadful irony that a Tree of Liberty stood in the shade of a guillotine.

There was a dreadful irony in his voice-a sense of profound mistrust in the words even as he offered them.

There was some dreadful irony in what he knew, and he could not tell her, even if he would have.

The dreadful, dreadful irony of it!

If the attacks on the World Trade Center made reflexive cynicism feel callow, the remedy is not less irony, but harder, sharper, more dreadful irony.

But Lord Crome meant something much blacker and bitterer than that when he said, with a dreadful irony, that it commemorated a romance in his family.