Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or quality of being painful, in any sense of that word.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Emotional distress; a fundamental feeling that people try to avoid.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state or quality of being painful, of causing pain.
  • noun The state or quality of being tedious, of requiring great care.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the quality of being painful
  • noun emotional distress; a fundamental feeling that people try to avoid

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

painful +‎ -ness

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word painfulness.

Examples

  • Last summer, when I was asked to join a "Kalachakra" -- a circle-of-life pilgrimage, this one actually where Prince Siddhartha discovered the realities of the world under the Bodhi Tree and abdicated his throne to try to show people a way to deal with life's painfulness, disease and death among them -- I jumped at the chance.

    Jim Luce: Following The Footsteps Of The Buddha Across North East India Jim Luce 2012

  • Last summer, when I was asked to join a "Kalachakra" -- a circle-of-life pilgrimage, this one actually where Prince Siddhartha discovered the realities of the world under the Bodhi Tree and abdicated his throne to try to show people a way to deal with life's painfulness, disease and death among them -- I jumped at the chance.

    Jim Luce: Following The Footsteps Of The Buddha Across North East India Jim Luce 2012

  • Last summer, when I was asked to join a "Kalachakra" -- a circle-of-life pilgrimage, this one actually where Prince Siddhartha discovered the realities of the world under the Bodhi Tree and abdicated his throne to try to show people a way to deal with life's painfulness, disease and death among them -- I jumped at the chance.

    Jim Luce: Following The Footsteps Of The Buddha Across North East India Jim Luce 2012

  • Last summer, when I was asked to join a "Kalachakra" -- a circle-of-life pilgrimage, this one actually where Prince Siddhartha discovered the realities of the world under the Bodhi Tree and abdicated his throne to try to show people a way to deal with life's painfulness, disease and death among them -- I jumped at the chance.

    Jim Luce: Following The Footsteps Of The Buddha Across North East India Jim Luce 2012

  • From Variety.com: "I would not be able to get through life had I not been able to view its painfulness in a comedic way," he once told a reporter.

    Blake Edwards dead at 88 Liz Kelly 2010

  • Yes, the first half of the week I was pretty terrified, and gripped the wheel almost to the point of painfulness; and I still get terribly lost, and frustrated when I do though increasingly less so; and I stress about people behind me, and irritating them, and getting honked at.

    Archive 2009-05-01 Ra 2009

  • The day will come when all the painfulness of this life will be resolved and healed and those who make it to heaven will enjoy the subsequent peace eternally.

    Feminist outrage & the banality of abortion (UPDATED) 2009

  • The question is: in what does the painfulness, the hurting quality, of pains consist?

    Pain Aydede, Murat 2009

  • Dr. Duncan further explains that the regular insertion of a feeding tube damages the birds 'esophagi, which exacerbates the painfulness of each force feeding, and that "[t] he birds' obesity will lead to myriad other problems from skeletal disorders to difficulties in coping with heat stress, and all of which are accompanied by feelings of malaise. "

    Bruce Friedrich: Scientific Evidence Proves: Foie Gras is Foul 2009

  • Yes, the first half of the week I was pretty terrified, and gripped the wheel almost to the point of painfulness; and I still get terribly lost, and frustrated when I do though increasingly less so; and I stress about people behind me, and irritating them, and getting honked at.

    A week into the new era Ra 2009

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Metapsychology: 'Grahek offers a prima facie dismissal of what many philosophers take to be a conceptual truth, i.e. that pain sensation and painfulness are inseparable. Actually, says Grahek, it doesn't require any a priori, philosophical, argument to tear apart such conceptual identification. All we have to do is to look at the clinical evidence concerning pain, specifically to two dissociation syndromes which seem to show that pain without painfulness and painfulness without pain, are possible. The book is mainly concerned with the syndrome called pain asymbolia, in which subjects report to feel pain deprived of its painful quality...'

    November 12, 2008