Dear Wordwind: The text I used as quoted by tsuwm had the word "drearest"
, which makes little sense. I found the orginal from tsuwm's citation, and found that the word should have been "dearest". I don't know how the error crept in. But the most probable explanation is a typo, though I don't see how it happened.

So any discussion of drear, or drearest is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial, as Perry Mason used to say.