struggle

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   strenuous effort

   the struggle to get through the crowd exhausted her

2. 2
   noun

   an energetic attempt to achieve something

   getting through the crowd was a real struggle

3. 3
   verb

   to exert strenuous effort against opposition

   I struggled to get free from the rope.

4. 4
   verb

   make a strenuous or labored effort

   I struggled for years to survive on bar gigs before I became famous.

5. 5
   noun

   Strife, contention, great effort.

   The struggle with ways and means had recommenced, more difficult now a hundredfold than it had been before, because of their increasing needs. Their income disappeared as a little rivulet that is swallowed by the thirsty ground. He worked night and day to supplement it.

6. 6
   verb

   To strive, to labour in difficulty, to fight (for or against), to contend.

   During the centuries, the people of Ireland struggled constantly to assert their right to govern themselves.

7. 7
   verb

   To have difficulty with something.

   One of the doctor’s patients struggled with depression.

8. 8
   verb

   To strive, or to make efforts, with a twisting, or with contortions of the body.

   She struggled to escape from her assailant's grasp.

Etymology

From Middle English struglen, stroglen, strogelen, of obscure origin. Cognate with Scots strugil (“to struggle, grapple, contend”). Perhaps from a variant of *strokelen, *stroukelen (> English stroll), from Middle Dutch struyckelen ("to stumble, trip, falter"; > Modern Dutch struikelen), the frequentative form of Old Dutch *strūkon (“to stumble”), from Proto-Germanic *strūkōną, *strūkēną (“to be stiff”), from Proto-Indo-European *strug-, *ster- (“to be stiff; to bristle, strut, stumble, fall”), related to Middle Low German strûkelen ("to stumble"; > Low German strükeln), Old High German strūhh…