painful

adj

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

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. Afflicted or suffering with pain (of a body part or, formerly, of a person).
3. Requiring effort or labor; difficult, laborious.
4. 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.”

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

5. Very bad, poor.

   “His violin playing is painful.”