hardship
Americannoun
-
hardships
plural
-
a condition that is difficult to endure; suffering; deprivation; oppression.
a life of hardship.
- Synonyms:
- misfortune, suffering, affliction, trouble
- Antonyms:
- ease
-
an instance or cause of this; something hard to bear, as a deprivation, lack of comfort, or constant toil or danger.
They faced bravely the many hardships of frontier life.
noun
-
conditions of life difficult to endure
-
something that causes suffering or privation
Synonym Usage
Hardship, privation, austerity refer to a condition hard to endure. Hardship applies to a circumstance in which excessive and painful effort of some kind is required, as enduring acute discomfort from cold, or battling over rough terrain. Privation has particular reference to lack of food, clothing, and other necessities or comforts. Austerity not only includes the ideas of privation and hardship but also implies deliberate control of emotional reactions to these.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of hardship
Explanation
If something is a hardship, it causes suffering or unpleasantness. After all the hardship you endured while training for the marathon, you really hope that you’ll do well — or at least finish! The word hard in hardship is a tip-off to its meaning: something that’s a hardship is hard. It could be hard work that you do for a larger goal — like training for the marathon — or it could be a situation that’s hard to endure. If you lose your job, you could end up experiencing financial hardship. Sometimes a hardship is something that just happens, like the hardship people suffer following a disaster.
Vocabulary lists containing hardship
ASVAB Word Knowledge
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Donald Trump Inauguration Address- January 20, 2017
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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.
See Examples For:
However, the agreement should not “put unnecessary hardship on the employee.”
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 21, 2026
The destitution they are now facing in Ceuta is a new experience for them, but they say the hardship is worth it for the chance at entering Europe.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
As Zhao Jian wrote in his essay: "life was hard, but it was hardship sustained by hope."
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
The copper-rich southern African nation went to the polls on Thursday in an election focused on economic hardship.
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
It worked no hardship on the people’s pocketbooks: only threepence the pound.
From "Johnny Tremain" by Esther Hoskins Forbes
And he is attentive to the hardships of these people’s lives, from the scant public transit options in America’s rural precincts to the need for supportive housing.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
For many, today's hardships only serve to highlight the absence of a leader who died a decade ago and is still seen as the wiley strategist who outwitted his American foes.
From Barron's ● Aug. 13, 2026
Despite the hardships, many Gazans working in IT stress their relatively good fortune.
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2026
This was intended as a practical, moderate solution to the economic hardships of the era.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 3, 2026
That He just proposed to sit up there and consign us to hardships one right after another?
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
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.
