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View synonyms for painful

painful

[ peyn-fuhl ]

adjective

  1. affected with, causing, or characterized by pain:

    a painful wound; a painful night; a painful memory.

    Synonyms: excruciating, agonizing

  2. laborious; exacting; difficult:

    a painful life.

    Synonyms: arduous

    Antonyms: easy

  3. Archaic. painstaking; careful.


painful

/ ˈpeɪnfʊl /

adjective

  1. causing pain; distressing

    a painful duty

  2. affected with pain

    a painful leg

  3. tedious or difficult
  4. informal.
    extremely bad

    a painful performance

“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Derived Forms

  • ˈpainfully, adverb
  • ˈpainfulness, noun
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Other Words From

  • painful·ly adverb
  • painful·ness noun
  • over·painful adjective
  • over·painful·ly adverb
  • over·painful·ness noun
  • un·painful adjective
  • un·painful·ly adverb
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Word History and Origins

Origin of painful1

Middle English word dating back to 1300–50; pain, -ful
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Example Sentences

While I didn’t project my own father onto the character of Jacob, what was really scary and painful but also so beautiful was in some ways realizing that I am my father, and I am an extension of him and his will and his desires.

Despite the painful loss, Conque said, Hill’s first words in that call were, “I had fun tonight.”

“I realized what made that moment so painful was the absence of presence,” Crivello said.

From Quartz

For parents, the notion that the impact of painful events can transcend children’s memories is unsettling.

You are the adult who can manage the awkward conversations about your son or frustrating forms of communication or even a painful broken attachment if “the mother takes her away.”

To his critics, he explained—sometimes at painful length—his reasoning against it.

But while his departure was “inexpressibly painful,” he never succumbed to bitterness.

What follows is hysterical, painful, weird, and strangely touching—a true Festivus for the rest of us.

I turned left, and began the long, painful walk to the emergency room at the University of Virginia medical center.

The audience--tout Hollywood--stands to cheer his slow and painful trek from the wings to the table.

The voice of duty called her to the kitchen, where her cook patiently awaited her inevitable, and always painful, audience.

It is painful to add, that the latter years of his life were passed in prison, where he was confined for debt.

In a thousand trials the cruel witness of Moses has sent innocent women to a painful death.

I did not anticipate a tour of pleasure through Ireland, but the reality is more painful than I anticipated.

He sees no longer the brink of the abyss beside which the path of progress picks its painful way.

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Paine, Thomaspain in the neck