painful
adjective
Simple meaning
Causing physical or psychological pain.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
paynfuhlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpeɪnfəl
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.
adjective
Causing physical or psychological pain
Causing pain or distress, either physical or mental.
Requiring effort or labor; difficult, laborious.
Afflicted or suffering with pain (of a body part or, formerly, of a person).
informal
Very bad, poor.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
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How this word commonly comes across.
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More ways to use painful
- “Worked with painful slowness.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
Inducing sharp physical pain.
Apt to give pain; causing grief or pain; delicate.
Causing physical or mental agony.
Causing pain or discomfort.
Causing great pain or anguish, agonizing.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Not causing physical or psychological pain.
Unpleasantly.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A somatic sensation of acute discomfort.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- stingverb
- inflammationnoun
- painnoun
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: causing physical or psychological pain
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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.