View synonyms for agonizing

agonizing

[ ag-uh-nahy-zing ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

adjective

accompanied by, filled with, or resulting in agony or distress:
We spent an agonizing hour waiting to hear if the accident had been serious or not.

First recorded in 1660–70; agonize + -ing ²

He makes his way, step by agonizing step, his face red and wheezing, his eyes straight ahead.

And we all know how long Rick has spent agonizing over how much of his old self to give up in order to stay alive.

What followed was an agonizing spectacle that ended when Lockett died at 7.06 p.m.—43 minutes after the drugs began to flow.

It catalogues a massive but doomed police investigation through its agonizing near-misses and mistaken hunches.

He was too busy riding shotgun on stagecoaches through the Sierras to sit at a desk agonizing over adverbs.

It was not until all the boxes and parcels must have arrived in the Condamine, that an agonizing thought struck Hugh.

Between agonizing moments, she chatted a little, and said it took her mind off her sufferings.

Isabel's brain seemed to eliminate every thought it had ever possessed and hurriedly to remodel down to one agonizing point.

He turned and suddenly broke into agonizing sobs and then ran down the steps.

He himself was insupportably aware of her, as she sat, doomed and agonizing, in her chair at the head of Brodrick's table.

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