agony
noun
Simple meaning
The last struggle of life.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
aguhneeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈæɡəni
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The last struggle of life; death struggle.
Extreme pain.
biblical
The sufferings of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane (often capitalized).
A state of acute pain
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The last struggle of life; death struggle.
Used this way, agony is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
The principal character in a work of fiction.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A newspaper columnist who answers questions and offers advice on personal problems to people who write in.
A newspaper column devoted to personal problems.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.