Meaning & use
painful
Causing physical pain or emotional distress, and difficult to bear or deal with.
See it in a sentence
Walking on the sprained ankle was too painful, so she used crutches for a week.
Admitting his mistake in front of the whole team was a painful experience.
A note on using this word
Painful can describe physical injury or emotional discomfort, and informally something tediously slow, like 'a painful meeting'.
Words with a similar meaning
agonizingdistressing
Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.
Words with an opposite meaning
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