Stressful

//ˈstɹɛsfəl// adj

adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Irritating; causing stress.

    "I have always argued that change becomes stressful and overwhelming only when you've lost any sense of the constancy of your life. You need firm ground to stand on. From there, you can deal with that change."

  2. 2
    Mentally taxing.
Adjective
  1. 1
    extremely irritating to the nerves wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
adverseantagonisticconflictingcontrarycountercounteractive

Example

More examples

"Men and women between the ages of 25 and 54 have the most stressful lives."

Etymology

From stress + -ful.

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