distress

distress n Distress, suffering, misery, agony, dolor, passion are comparable when denoting the state of one that is in great trouble or in pain of mind or body.

Distress commonly implies conditions or circumstances that cause physical or mental stress or strain; usually also it connotes the possibility of relief or the need of assistance

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to pity distress is human; to relieve it is Godlike— Mann

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The word is applicable to things as well as to persons; thus, a ship in distress is helpless and in peril because of some untoward circumstance (as a breakdown in machinery); a community's distress may be the result of a disaster or of an event imposing extreme hardships on the people. When used to designate a mental state, distress usually implies the stress or strain of fear, anxiety, or shame

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the original shock and distress that were caused by the first serious work of scholars on the Bible— Montague

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it had evidently been a great distress to him, to have the days of his imprisonment recalled— Dickens

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she therefore dressed exclusively in black, to her husband's vast amusement and her mother's rumored distress— Wylie

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Suffering is used especially in reference to human beings; often it implies conscious awareness of pain or distress and conscious endurance (extreme sensibility to physical suffering . . . characterizes modern civilization— Inge)

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the losses and hardships and sufferings entailed by war— Russell

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Misery stresses the unhappy or wretched conditions attending distress or suffering; it often connotes sordidness, or dolefulness, or abjectness

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for bleak, unadulterated misery that dak bungalow was the worst ... I had ever set foot in— Kipling

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she had . . . cheated and shamed herself . . . exchanged content for misery and pride for humiliation— Bennett

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Agony suggests suffering so intense that both body and mind are involved in a struggle to endure the unbearable

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fell with a scream of mortal agony— Mason

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the agony of being found wanting and exposed to the disapproval of others— Mead

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Dolor is a somewhat literary word applied chiefly to mental suffering that involves sorrow, somber depression, or grinding anxiety

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heaviness is upon them, and dolor thickens the air they walk through— Frank

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Passion is now rare in this sense except in reference to the sufferings of Jesus in the garden at Gethsemane and culminating in his crucifixion.

Analogous words: affliction, *trial, tribulation: *sorrow, grief, anguish, woe, heartbreak: strait, pass, pinch, exigency (see JUNCTURE): hardship, *difficulty, rigor, vicissitude: *pain, pang, ache

Contrasted words: comforting or comfort, solacing or solace, consolation (see corresponding verbs at COMFORT): alleviation, assuagement, mitigation, allaying, relieving or relief (see corresponding verbs at RELIEVE)

distress vb *trouble, ail

Analogous words: *afflict, try, torment, torture, rack: *worry, annoy, harass, harry, plague, pester: *depress, oppress, weigh

Contrasted words: *comfort, console, solace: *help, aid, assist: *relieve, alleviate, lighten, mitigate, assuage, allay