- present participle of suffer.
suffering
Americannoun
-
the pain, misery, or loss experienced by a person who suffers
-
the state or an instance of enduring pain, etc
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of suffering
First recorded in 1350–1400; suffer + -ing 1 ( def. )
Explanation
Suffering is the kind of pain you feel when you shatter your ankle and it's what you'll see all around you if you find yourself in the middle of a tornado or an earthquake. When you're suffering, you're not happy — in fact, you're quite miserable. The Latin roots that give us suffering and related words paint a vivid picture of what suffering feels like. The word comes from sub-, meaning "below," and ferre, "bear." Suffering is something pressing you down that you have to submit to and bear. It's definitely the opposite of fun.
Vocabulary lists containing suffering
Because of Winn-Dixie
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"The Young American" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The House of Hades
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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:
My friend refused because he was still suffering from his injuries, and the lawyer withdrew.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 26, 2026
"If something positive can come from this unbearable loss that we're suffering, that's all we look to achieve."
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026
Stewart played through a stress fracture in his foot throughout his freshman season after suffering the injury in August.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2026
One million children in Afghanistan are suffering from life-threatening malnutrition in a worsening new crisis hitting the country, the United Nations warned Tuesday.
From Barron's ● Aug. 25, 2026
He was solicitous toward Ethel Collins about this, since she’d been suffering with a chronic gum problem for years.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
I saw no deep reflection on the sufferings of his countrymen.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 30, 2026
Researchers have increasingly linked such sufferings to heavy social media use among adolescents.
From Barron's ● Mar. 25, 2026
Coon: It’s meaningful that Mike set this season in Thailand, in a Buddhist country, because, of course, if you look at the tenets of Buddhism, one of the great sufferings is comparing mind.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 31, 2025
Throughout the trip, he was deeply moved by the sufferings he witnessed in Gaza and focused on providing aid to the widowed and elderly, he added.
From BBC ● Mar. 24, 2025
On the other hand, the synthetic sufferings of false animals didn’t bother Milt Borogrove or their boss Hannibal Sloat.
From "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
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.
