hardship

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.

Definitions of hardship
  1. noun
    something hard to endure
    synonyms: asperity, grimness, rigor, rigorousness, rigour, rigourousness, severeness, severity
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    types:
    sternness
    the quality (as of scenery) being grim and gloomy and forbidding
    type of:
    difficultness, difficulty
    the quality of being difficult
  2. noun
    something that causes or entails suffering
    “"I cannot think it a hardship that more indulgence is allowed to men than to women"- James Boswell”
    “the many hardships of frontier life”
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    type of:
    bad luck, misfortune
    unnecessary and unforeseen trouble resulting from an unfortunate event
  3. noun
    a state of misfortune or affliction
    “a life of hardship”
    synonyms: adversity, hard knocks
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    types:
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    ill-being
    lack of prosperity or happiness or health
    catastrophe, disaster
    a state of extreme (usually irremediable) ruin and misfortune
    extremity
    an extreme condition or state (especially of adversity or disease)
    distress
    a state of adversity (danger or affliction or need)
    affliction
    a state of great suffering and distress due to adversity
    victimization
    adversity resulting from being made a victim
    low-water mark, nadir
    an extreme state of adversity; the lowest point of anything
    miserableness, misery, wretchedness
    a state of ill-being due to affliction or misfortune
    anguish
    extreme distress of body or mind
    bitter end
    the final extremity (however unpleasant it may be)
    pressure
    an oppressive condition of physical or mental or social or economic distress
    throe
    hard or painful trouble or struggle
    cross, crown of thorns
    any affliction that causes great suffering
    type of:
    bad luck, ill luck, misfortune, tough luck
    an unfortunate state resulting from unfavorable outcomes
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