painful

comparative painfuller · comparative more painful · superlative painfullest · superlative most painful · alternative painfull

1. Causing pain or distress, either physical or mental.First known use 14th c.

   A rackingly painful disease that affects the joints and finally cripples, it is caused by an imbalance of uric acid in the system.

   2014, Charles L. Mee, Jr, Lorenzo de Medici

   1 more example

   In a 2008 case report from India, doctors described removing a giant tonsillolith that was making it painful for a young patient to swallow.

   2009 September 1, Elizabeth Svoboda, “In Tonsils, a Problem the Size of a Pea”, in The New York Times

   Synonyms: excruciating, torturous, agonizing, ailsome, excruciating, groanful, hellish, hurtful · Antonyms: painless, painfree

2. Afflicted or suffering with pain (of a body part or, formerly, of a person).First known use 15th c.

   Synonyms: doleful, sorrowful, smartful, irksome, annoying · Antonyms: painless, painfree

3. Requiring effort or labor; difficult, laborious.First known use 15th c.

   Synonyms: laborious, exerting

4. archaicPainstaking; careful; industrious.First known use 16th c.

   For twenty generations, here was the earthly arena where painful living men worked out their life-wrestle

   1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, chapter 2, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk)

   2 more examples

   The men bestow their times in fishing, hunting, warres, and such manlike exercises, scorning to be seene in any woman-like exercise, which is the cause that the women be very painefull, and the men often idle.

   1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, Kupperman, published 1988, page 142

   To all these painful labourers Johnson shewed a never-ceasing kindness, so far as they stood in need of it.

   1791, James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson

5. informalVery bad, poor.

   His violin playing is painful.