Hardship

//ˈhɑɹdˌʃɪp// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Difficulty or trouble; hard times. countable, uncountable

    "He has survived periods of financial hardship before."

  2. 2
    something hard to endure wordnet
  3. 3
    A burden, a source of difficulty that could impose a barrier. countable, uncountable

    "When you visit the museum, we invite you to make a donation of $10 if this will not be a hardship."

  4. 4
    something that causes or entails suffering wordnet
  5. 5
    a state of misfortune or affliction wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    To treat (a person) badly; to subject to hardships. transitive

    "[…] an adjustment of the income tax could easily produce the twenty millions without hardshipping any industrious person in the community […]"

Synonyms

All synonyms
adversityafflictionasperityhardnessmisfortuneprivation

Example

More examples

"Kaishuu made nothing of hardship."

Etymology

From Middle English hardshipe, equivalent to hard + -ship.

Related phrases

hardship postdifficult experiencepoverty sicknessput togetherstrife poverty

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.