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say it: PAYN-fuhl
painful is an adjective meaning "causing physical or psychological pain". It is pronounced /ˈpeɪnfəl/ — PAYN-fuhl. It carries 4 recorded senses.
causing misery or pain or distress
“it was a sore trial to him”
“the painful process of growing up”
exceptionally bad or displeasing
“atrocious taste”
“abominable workmanship”
“an awful voice”
“dreadful manners”
“a painful performance”
“terrible handwriting”
“an unspeakable odor came sweeping into the room”
causing physical discomfort
“bites of black flies are more than irritating; they can be very painful”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for painful come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.