painful

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   causing physical or psychological pain

   worked with painful slowness

2. 2
   adj

   Causing pain or distress, either physical or mental.

   In a 2008 case report from India, doctors described removing a giant tonsillolith that was making it painful for a young patient to swallow.

3. 3
   adj

   Painstaking; careful; industrious.

   The men bestow their times in fishing, hunting, warres, and such manlike exercises, scorning to be seene in any woman-like exercise, which is the cause that the women be very painefull, and the men often idle.

4. 4
   adj

   Very bad, poor.

   His violin playing is painful.

5. 5
   adj

   causing physical discomfort

6. 6
   adj

   exceptionally bad or displeasing

7. 7
   adj

   causing misery or pain or distress

8. 8
   adj

   Afflicted or suffering with pain (of a body part or, formerly, of a person).

Etymology

From Middle English paynful, peinful, peynful, paynefull, peynefull, equivalent to pain + -ful. Compare Danish pinefuld (“painful”).