agonize
Americanverb (used without object)
-
to suffer extreme pain or anguish; be in agony.
-
to put forth great effort of any kind.
verb (used with object)
verb
-
to suffer or cause to suffer agony
-
(intr) to make a desperate effort; struggle; strive
Other Word Forms
- agonizingly adverb
Etymology
Origin of agonize
1575–85; < Medieval Latin agōnizāre < Greek agōnízesthai to struggle (for a prize), equivalent to agōn- agon + -izesthai -ize
Explanation
When you worry excessively about something, you agonize about it. The mother of a teenage boy might agonize over his safety when he first learns to drive. Agonize can mean to suffer true pain, but it's generally a mental type of anguish. A student might agonize over what to wear the first day of school, and a boss might agonize about how to break the bad news about layoffs to her employees. The earliest meaning of agonize was "to torture," though now it means something closer to "to torture one's self." The Greek root is a grand one: agonizesthai, "to contend in the struggle."
Vocabulary lists containing agonize
The Diary of Anne Frank
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Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie
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An American Plague
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Rather than agonize over how to restore the landscape to some former, unobtainable baseline of “natural,” officials unanimously agreed that this bold re-imagining of the coast was the best way forward among no perfect options.
From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 10, 2025
Refusing even a hint of introspection, she added: “We don’t agonize over what happened. We organize about what comes next.”
From Slate • Nov. 15, 2024
When they wed, their fans swoon; when stars divorce, people agonize over what went wrong.
From Salon • Jan. 5, 2024
They worked through hundreds of sketches by hand, then transported the design into Adobe Illustrator to agonize over details such as the curvature of the ribbon in its bottom right corner.
From Seattle Times • Dec. 4, 2023
But the Permian drive sputtered and it was time for Wyles to agonize his way through another field goal, this one from the 30 instead of the 31.
From "Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, And A Dream" by H.G. Bissinger
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
