Library / English Dictionary

    ANGUISH

    Pronunciation (US): Play  (GB): Play

     I. (noun) 

    Sense 1

    Meaning:

    Extreme mental distressplay

    Synonyms:

    anguish; torment; torture

    Classified under:

    Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

    Hypernyms ("anguish" is a kind of...):

    distress; hurt; suffering (psychological suffering)

    Derivation:

    anguish (cause emotional anguish or make miserable)

    anguish (suffer great pains or distress)

    Sense 2

    Meaning:

    Extreme distress of body or mindplay

    Classified under:

    Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

    Hypernyms ("anguish" is a kind of...):

    distress (a state of adversity (danger or affliction or need))

    Derivation:

    anguish (cause emotional anguish or make miserable)

     II. (verb) 

    Sense 1

    Meaning:

    Cause emotional anguish or make miserableplay

    Example:

    It pains me to see my children not being taught well in school

    Synonyms:

    anguish; hurt; pain

    Classified under:

    Verbs of feeling

    Hypernyms (to "anguish" is one way to...):

    discomfit; discompose; disconcert; untune; upset (cause to lose one's composure)

    Cause:

    suffer (experience (emotional) pain)

    Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "anguish"):

    break someone's heart (cause deep emotional pain and grief to somebody)

    agonise; agonize (cause to agonize)

    try (give pain or trouble to)

    excruciate; rack; torment; torture (torment emotionally or mentally)

    Sentence frame:

    Something ----s somebody

    Sentence example:

    The bad news will anguish him


    Derivation:

    anguish (extreme mental distress)

    anguish (extreme distress of body or mind)

    Sense 2

    Meaning:

    Suffer great pains or distressplay

    Classified under:

    Verbs of feeling

    Hypernyms (to "anguish" is one way to...):

    suffer (experience (emotional) pain)

    Sentence frame:

    Somebody ----s

    Sentence example:

    Sam and Sue anguish over the results of the experiment


    Derivation:

    anguish (extreme mental distress)

    Credits

     Context examples: 

    Traces of deep-seated anguish appeared in my countenance.

    (David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

    With a confidence in Mr Elliot's regard, more creditable to his feelings than his judgement, Mr Smith had appointed him the executor of his will; but Mr Elliot would not act, and the difficulties and distress which this refusal had heaped on her, in addition to the inevitable sufferings of her situation, had been such as could not be related without anguish of spirit, or listened to without corresponding indignation.

    (Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

    But for all the hurry of his coming, these were not the dews of exertion that he wiped away, but the moisture of some strangling anguish; for his face was white and his voice, when he spoke, harsh and broken.

    (The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

    Amy followed, but she poked her hands out stiffly before her, and jerked herself along as if she went by machinery, and her Ow! was more suggestive of pins being run into her than of fear and anguish.

    (Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

    These were the circumstances and the hopes which gradually brought their alleviation to Sir Thomas, deadening his sense of what was lost, and in part reconciling him to himself; though the anguish arising from the conviction of his own errors in the education of his daughters was never to be entirely done away.

    (Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

    He was conveyed home, and the anguish that was visible in my countenance betrayed the secret to Elizabeth.

    (Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

    This gave place to a sense of intolerable anguish.

    (The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

    Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love: its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion.

    (Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

    Fixed there by the keenest of all anguish, self-reproach, she could find no interval of ease or forgetfulness.

    (Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

    He groaned in anguish that not even hope could soften.

    (Dracula, by Bram Stoker)


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