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Distressful   Listen
adjective
Distressful  adj.  Full of distress; causing, indicating, or attended with, distress; as, a distressful situation. "Some distressful stroke." "Distressful cries."
Synonyms: distressing.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Distressful" Quotes from Famous Books



... than an hour had elapsed, I heard his footstep, and soon perceived him advancing, bearing something bulky in his arms, while he called loudly upon me in a distressful tone. I hastened towards him, and upon my arrival he exclaimed, "Alas, alas! the beloved daughter of my uncle is no more, and I bear her remains. She was hastening, as usual, to my tent, when suddenly a lion sprung upon her in the path, and tore her in pieces. These relics ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... presence, a man and a boy from that distressful outer world had entered. They moved with effort and difficulty into its untrodden depths. Uninvited and unasked, they sought its hidden and invisible centre, the mysterious heart of it which the younger of the adventurers could only describe by saying that "It isn't there, because when you ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... themselves obliged in 1838 to offer $18 per month together with the customary weekly rations of three and a half pounds of bacon and ten quarts of corn and also the services of a staff physician as a sort of substitute for life and health insurance.[25] The beginning of the distressful 'forties eased the market so that the town of Milledgeville could get its street gang on a scale of $125;[26] at the middle of the decade slaveowners were willing to take almost any wages offered; and in its final year the Georgia Railroad paid only $70 to $75 for ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... is here begun should not proceed, how thou wouldst have distressful want of knowing more; and by thyself thou wilt see how desirous I was to hear from these of their conditions, as they became manifest to mine eyes. "O well-born,[1] to whom Grace concedes to see ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... thousands of people had begged him on their knees not to give them up to destruction—only a new soul could give him back his strength—he felt that he was bending over more and more to the left and the whole universe might collapse at any moment: all this he muttered indistinctly, confusedly, his distressful eyes fixed ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... private feelings and opinions, and, somehow, feeling as if he were a trusted and confidential friend though he was an absolute stranger—such is the wonderful influence of Power in self-possessed repose, over Weakness in distressful uncertainty! ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... butt of it as a lever, and spent another thirty minutes focusing his full strength on the opposite end. The rock, however, refused to move an inch, and, because a few crackers are not much for a hungry man to work on after an all-night march, Thurston became conscious that he had a headache and a distressful stitch in his side. Still, being obstinate and filled with an unreasoning desire to prove his trustworthiness to his fair employer, he continued doggedly, and after another hour's digging found the stone still ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... instances, Gildon ascribes this taste in Dryden, to his having read many French Romances.—The truth is, if a poet would affect the heart, he must not exceed nature too much, nor colour too high; distressful circumstances, short speeches, and pathetic observations never fail to move infinitely beyond the highest rant, or long declamations in tragedy: The simplicity of the drama was Otway's peculiar excellence; a living poet observes, that from Otway to ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... venture to adduce one or two of the favourable opinions entertained in regard to some of the miscellaneous pieces which went to make up the volume of the 'Songs of the Ark.' Of the piece entitled 'Apathy,' Allan Cunningham thus wrote:—'Although sufficiently distressful, it is a very bold and original poem, such as few men, except Byron, would have conceived or could have written.' Motherwell said of the 'Sea-gray Man,' that it was 'the best of all modern ballads.' This ballad, shortly after I had composed it, I repeated to the Ettrick Shepherd walking on the banks ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... to the principal persons, however serious or distressful through its intermediate incidents, in their opinion constituted a comedy. This idea of a comedy continued long amongst us, and plays were written, which, by changing the catastrophe, were ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson

... miles of French territory. Mesopotamia was conquered as the result of the patient labours of Sir Charles Monro and the brilliant strategy of Sir Stanley Maude, who had been appointed in August 1916. The meagre German holding in East Africa was further reduced; and even distressful Rumania put a ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... key found by Mr. Wimp in his sofa must have lain there for some years, having been lost there in the days when he occupied the bedroom afterward rented by Mr. Constant. Afraid to miss his train, he did not undress on that distressful night. Meantime the thought occurred to him that Jessie was too clever a girl to leave so easy a trail, and he jumped to the conclusion that she would be going to her married brother in America, and had gone to Devonport merely to bid her ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... early Guptas. The blank in Buddhist history which follows his career can be explained first by the progress of Hinduism at the expense of Buddhism and secondly by the invasions of the Huns. The Chinese pilgrim Sung-Yuen has left us an account of India in this distressful period and for the seventh century the works of Hsuean Chuang and I-Ching give ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... cheerful, active, bustling, and hopeful. She did, indeed, inform Mr Toots privately, that she was only 'keeping up' for the time, and that when it was all over, and Miss Dombey was gone, she might be expected to become a spectacle distressful; and Mr Toots did also express that it was his case too, and that they would mingle their tears together; but she never otherwise indulged her private feelings in the presence of Florence or within the precincts ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... himself could live contentedly on so little, was the most open-handed of men, the most liberal and cheerful of givers; and whether to Samoans in distressful times, or to others who sought his aid, his purse was never closed; while his hospitality was like Sir Walter's. Probably, in his hour of greatest success, he never was among "the best sellers." But any financial anxieties which may have beset him were assuaged, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... by MARY BRADFORD-WHITING. It is called Denis O'Neil, and tells of the adventures of a young Irish Doctor who gets entangled in the plots of one of those Secret Societies that used to exist in "the most distressful country that ever yet was seen," some twenty years ago. The romance contains some clever sketches of character. The story (published by BENTLEY) ends sadly, and those who want to find fault with it will ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various

... Auguste into the inner room. The Baron, in his boots, lay upon the bed, his body bent almost double by the unrelenting gripe of a distressful pain. His teeth were tightly clenched, and the rigid muscles around the mouth distorted the natural expression of his face. Every few seconds a prolonged groan escaped him. His fine eyes rolled piteously. Anon, he would press both hands upon his abdomen and shiver in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... honeymoon in Skye in which the attentions of Sir Isaac and the comforts of a first-class hotel had obscured a marvellous background of sombre mountain and wide stretches of shining sea. Sir Isaac had been very fond and insistent and inseparable, and she was doing her best to conceal a strange distressful jangling of her nerves which she now feared might presently dispose her to scream. Sir Isaac had been goodness itself, but how she craved now for solitude! She was under the impression now that they were going to his mother's house in Highbury. Then she thought he would ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... by the theatrical costumier. Green velvet and gold lace, topped by cocked hats that had despoiled the ostrich to make a human biped vainly ridiculous, adorned Ginirals and Cornels that had no rigiments belongun' to 'um at all at all! and had come over from the Distressful Country to make a bould bid for glory, with the experience of warfare acquired while lurking behind hedges with shot-guns, in waiting for persons in disfavour ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... tenderly as women, and so parted; for poor Ned could not stay to see his comrade die. For a little while, there was no sound in the room but the drip of water from a stump or two, and John's distressful gasps, as he slowly breathed his life away. I thought him nearly gone, and had just laid down the fan, believing its help to be no longer needed, when suddenly he rose up in his bed, and cried out with a bitter cry that broke the silence, sharply startling ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott

... New Orleans it had been my intention to enter Nicaragua and report to a certain New Orleans newspaper on the conditions in that most distressful country; said paper having commissioned me to do so. Entrance to the State could only be made from Guatemala, but that country's consul in New Orleans refused to issue the necessary passport. Had I gone as an Englishman, and not as an American, there might have been no difficulty. As said before, ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... coat, grovelled upon my desk, and burst again into distressful weeping. Whatever it was about, I said to myself ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... Isabel approved heartily, and said Sarah would stay near the sleeping babe, and she would spend the evening with her mother. She and Arthur went together as far as the cross-paths in the arbor, and there, in parting, he clasped and kissed her with a sudden frenzy that only added one more distressful misgiving to the many ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable

... general to improve; but I have been troubled for many weeks with a vexatious catarrh, which is sometimes sufficiently distressful. I have not found any great effects from bleeding and physick; and am afraid, that I must expect help from brighter days ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... don't bet"; and he went on singing, "'Tis the most distressful country this that ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... this sort the simple household lived From day to day, to Michael's ear there came Distressful tidings. Long before the time Of which I speak, the Shepherd had been bound 210 In surety for his brother's son, a man Of an industrious life, and ample means; But unforeseen misfortunes suddenly Had pressed upon him; and old Michael now Was summoned to discharge ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... up to the unsuspecting Rat, who began chattering cheerfully about what they would do when they got back, and how jolly a fire of logs in the parlour would be, and what a supper he meant to eat; never noticing his companion's silence and distressful state of mind. At last, however, when they had gone some considerable way further, and were passing some tree stumps at the edge of a copse that bordered the road, he stopped and said kindly, "Look here, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... great grief, then, in the life of the boy who was now a grown man. His sister brought disgrace upon herself, and died under extremely distressful circumstances, into which I need not enter here; and for a while these things darkened and embittered his life." He paused a moment, and gazed into the fire, a look of deep sorrow and regret on his sharply-cut face, and Ethelrida unconsciously allowed her slim fingers to tighten ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... cautious, on the other hand, to allow full value to the endurance, by tender and delicate persons, of what is really loathsome or distressful to them in the service of others; and I think this picture of Holbein's indicative of the exact balance and rightness of his own mind in this matter, and therefore of his power to conceive a true saint also. He had to represent St. Catherine's chief effort;—he paints her ministering ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... at her with a very distressful little face as she crossed the room making this new announcement; and just as she disappeared through the trap-door, only her head being visible, she added with great emphasis, "The thinner you get ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood

... new letter to Sibyl Carnaby. It was written in a cheery humour, though touched by the shadow of distressful circumstance. She told the story of Mr. Dymes's visit, and made merry over it. 'I am sure this is the very newest thing in "proposals". Though I live in such a dull, lonely way, it has made me feel that I am still in touch with civilisation. And really, if the worst come to ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... and nature the peculiar province of woman, "the weaker vessel"; for neglecting their shops, their fields, their counting-houses, and their interesting families, and wasting their precious time in writing love-tales, "doleful ditties," and "distressful strains," for the magazines; for flirting with the muse, while their wives are wanting shoes, or perpetrating puns, while their children cry for "buns"! Suppose that, pointing every line with wit, I should hold them up to contempt as careless, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... way over the gutters to the shop of his Chinaman opposite. From there he watched the little company issue forth and turn into Crooked Lane, where the entrance was. It gave him a sense that she had her part in this squalor, which was not altogether distressful in that it also localised her in the warm, living, habitable world, and helped to make her thinkable and attainable. Then he went to his room at the club and found there a note from Miss Howe, written apparently to forgive him in advance, to say that she had not expected him. "Friendly creature!" ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... homage paid to those in high places. More deeply than in the hearts of others was this resentment implanted in the heart of Franz Ferdinand, and he never forgave the world what he suffered and went through in those distressful months. It was chiefly the ostensible vacillation of the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Count Goluchowski, that had so deeply hurt the Archduke, who had always imagined that Goluchowski was deeply attached to him. According to ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth! how little imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks, and feeding the bitter grass among their ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... completely broken off. The rumour was that McMahon had crossed the Rhine at Strassburg with one hundred and fifty thousand men on the march to interpose between Southern and Northern Germany. The house had not heard from Paris and could not expect to hear. Acting on their advice I sent a distressful telegram roundabout through Switzerland to Paris. There was a possibility that such a message might go through; otherwise there was no hope. I then spent at Munich one of the most anxious weeks of my life. I was nearer ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... by a privy door, whereat he had entered; then, setting her on horseback, he took to the road with all his men, as softliest he might, and returned to his own dominions. However (for that he had a wife) he carried the lady, who was the most distressful of women, not to Athens, but to a very goodly place he had by the sea, a little without the city, and there entertained her in secret, causing honourably furnish her ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... herself wearily down on a pile of cushions that lay beside the basin, and beckoning Christie to sit near, said, as she pressed her hands to her hot forehead and looked up with a distressful brightness in the haggard eyes that seemed to have no rest ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... introductions. Jenkins with his flowing overcoat wide open over his loyal breast, beams his best and most cordial smile; there is a significant wrinkle on his brow, however. He is uneasy about the surprises which may be held in store for them by the establishment, of the distressful condition of which he is better aware than any one. If only Pondevez had taken proper precautions. Things begin well, at any rate. The rather theatrical view from the entrance, of those white fleeces frisking about among the bushes, have ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... entered. I have played no spy's part, sir. I chanced to see you pass the gate, and followed. You might have heard me knocking for admission, had you been less swift of foot, or lingered in the garden. Please to withdraw. Your presence here is offensive to me and distressful to my niece.' As he said these words, he passed his arm about the waist of the terrified and weeping girl, and drew her closer to him; and though the habitual severity of his manner was scarcely changed, there was yet apparent ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... grandeur of the castle—the spreading woods—the winding river, gladly leaving his unsightly, heathy source, and lingering with apparent delight as he passes the fairy walk at the bottom of the garden;—your late distressful anxieties—your present enjoyments—your dear little angel, the pride of your hopes;—my aged friend, venerable in worth and years, whose loyalty and other virtues will strongly entitle her to the support of the Almighty Spirit here, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... a one-lunger once," Bunt continued, as he uncorked the bottle, "and the acquaintance was some distressful by reason of its bringing me into strained relations with a cow-rustlin', hair-liftin', only-one-born-in-captivity, man-eatin' brute of a one-legged Greaser which he was named Peg-leg Smith. He was shy a leg because of a shotgun that the other man thought wasn't loaded. And this here ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... one anecdote of that felicity of temper—that undisturbed good-humour which never abandoned Cibber in his most distressful moments. When he brought out, in 1724, his Caesar in Egypt, at a great expense, and "a beggarly account of empty boxes" was the result, it raised some altercations between the poet and his brother managers, the bard still struggling for another ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... himself. During his childhood this disposition was so like torpor that his father grew uneasy about him. The remarkable size of the head and the width of the brow roused a fear that the child might be liable to water on the brain. His distressful face, whose originality was thought ugliness by those who had no eye for the moral value of a countenance, wore rather a sullen expression during his childhood. The features, which developed later ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... afterward, in the dusk of early morning, he heard the distressful cries of an owl. Hunting about, he found the unfortunate bird caught in a net which some birdcatchers had spread. "Why will men persecute and torment harmless creatures!" exclaimed Charming, as he set the bird free. The owl fluttered above ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... to bark, with hemlock. I'll do anything for some time longer, but my patience will, I see, after a certain time, be exhausted. As to poor Pierre, it is over with him. Sir Lucas says the disorder is past all remedy. This is a most distressful story to me, and how to supply his ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... now advancing in reputation, and though frequently involved in very distressful perplexities, appeared, however, to be gaining upon mankind, when both his fame and his life were endangered by an event, of which it is not yet determined whether it ought to be mentioned as a ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... Both started up and rushed to the door. The crowd were hastening on, bearing with them the melancholy evidence of the truth of what they had just heard. It came on still—it stopt—it was at their own door it stopt. The old man could not speak, but his wife rushed forward with a distressful shriek. The truth was soon all known. They had no child. They had only a dead body to weep over—to lay in the grave. Is it necessary to say more? A few days passed. They were the bitterest days the bereaved parents had ever ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... not gentle, Yet rest where thou art, 'Twill be dreadful to meet, And distressful to part. The champion of Ulster! Oh! think what a foe! In that meeting there's grief, In that journey ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy



Words linked to "Distressful" :   disturbing, worrisome, troubling, worrying



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