suffering

1. 1.

   troubled by pain or loss

   “suffering refugees”

   Similartroubled
2. 2.

   very unhappy; full of misery

   “he felt depressed and miserable”

   “a message of hope for suffering humanity”

   “wretched prisoners huddled in stinking cages”

   Synonymsmiserablewretched

   Similarunhappy

Other forms of suffering

plural

sufferings·

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.

Questions about suffering

What does suffering mean?

suffering means "a state of acute pain". That is the primary sense; the word has 6 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in suffering?

suffering has 3 syllables: suf-fe-ring. The stress falls on "suf". In IPA it is /ˈsʌfɚɪŋ/.

What is another word for suffering?

Close synonyms include agony, excruciation, woe, distress, hurt. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is suffering a common word?

suffering is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.