painful

[peyn-fuhl]

adjective

1. affected with, causing, or characterized by pain.

   a painful wound; a painful night; a painful memory.

   Synonyms: excruciating, agonizing

2. laborious; exacting; difficult.

   a painful life.

   Synonyms: arduous
   Antonyms: easy

3. Archaic.,  painstaking; careful.

painful

/ ˈpeɪnfʊl /

adjective

1. causing pain; distressing

   a painful duty

2. affected with pain

   a painful leg

3. tedious or difficult

4. informal,  extremely bad

   a painful performance

Other Word Forms

• painfully adverb
• painfulness noun
• overpainful adjective
• overpainfully adverb
• overpainfulness noun
• unpainful adjective
• unpainfully adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of painful¹

Middle English word dating back to 1300–50; pain, -ful

Example Sentences

The United States on Monday urged the European Union to rethink its approach to digital regulation if it wants a deal to lower painful US tariffs on the bloc's steel exports.

Read more on Barron's

It probably makes the defeat even more painful for Spurs that a player they tried to sign ended up scoring a hat-trick against them.

Read more on BBC

Once you’ve built your identity around a cause, however, it’s painful to admit that identity may be based on falsehoods.

Read more on Salon

She received lots of tiny injections of polynucleotides, which was a "pretty painful procedure", but says it's helped reduce the dark circles under her eyes.

Read more on BBC

It was the stock market’s largest blown gain since April’s tariff-fueled market turmoil, and it extended a painful stretch for the stocks at the heart of the AI boom.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• agonizing 
• arduous 
• awful 
• difficult 
• dire 
• distasteful 
• distressing www.thesaurus.com
• excruciating 
• hard 
• harrowing 
• heart-wrenching 
• hurtful 
• severe 
• tedious 
• terrible 
• troublesome 
• uncomfortable 
• unpleasant