painful

adjective

1. 1

   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.

   A rackingly painful disease that affects the joints and finally cripples, it is caused by an imbalance of uric acid in the system.

2. 2

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

3. 3

   Requiring effort or labor; difficult, laborious.

4. 4

   archaicPainstaking; 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.

   To all these painful labourers Johnson shewed a never-ceasing kindness, so far as they stood in need of it.

   For twenty generations, here was the earthly arena where painful living men worked out their life-wrestle

5. 5

   informalVery bad, poor.

   His violin playing is painful.

Forms

comparative

painfuller, more painful

superlative

painfullest, most painful