Tribulation
name, noun ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Any adversity; a trying period or event. countable, uncountable
"What wit have we (poor fools) to wit what will serve us, when the blessed Apostle himself in his sore tribulation, praying thrice unto God to take it away from him, was answered again by God in a manner that he was but a fool in asking that request, but that the help of God's grace in that tribulation to strengthen him was far better for him, than to take that tribulation from him?"
- 2 an annoying or frustrating or catastrophic event wordnet
- 1 (A period of) persecution before the Second Coming, lasting seven years, which Christians will experience worldwide which will purify and strengthen them.
Example
More examples"Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam is a so-called Abrahamic religion. Muslims, as Islamic people are called, repudiate Christianity's Trinity which alludes to polytheism. Islam is strictly monotheistic as they believe that there is only One God, Allāh. Their sacred writings are in the Qur'an, divided into 114 suras, containing 6236 āyāt, verses. Muslims believe that the Qur'an is only perfect in the original Arabic because any translation would be deficient. Their main prophet is Muhammad, the messenger. Muslim eschatology includes bodily resurrection at the Day of Resurrection, Yawm al-Qiyāmah, when everyone will be judged for good or bad deeds. Trials and tribulation precede and coincide with al-Qiyāmah, the time of which no human knows. (I read somewhere too that in Islam, being in hell may be an impermanent condition.) Like other Abrahamicists, Muslims believe in angels. Muslims believe in predestination or divine preordainment. Muslims must pray 5 times during the day. The prayer rituals are called Ṣalāh. Like other religions, Islam has subdivisions, as the Sunni and Shia, the contention being the successor, Abu Bakr or Ali respectively, to Muhammad. (The Islamic religion's progression and overall ambiance are depicted in Frank Herbert's Dune series, which is set thousands of years from now in outer space. There is a desert planet called Arrakis.)"
Etymology
From Middle English tribulation, from Old French tribulacion, from Late Latin trībulātiō (“distress, trouble, tribulation, affliction”), from Latin tribulāre (“to press, probably also thresh out grain”), from trībulum (“a sledge consisting of a wooden block studded with sharp pieces of flint or with iron teeth, used for threshing grain”), from terēre (“to rub”); see trite.
Proprialization from tribulation.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.