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HARDSHIP
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Something hard to endure
Example:
the asperity of northern winters
Synonyms:
asperity; grimness; hardship; rigor; rigorousness; rigour; rigourousness; severeness; severity
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("hardship" is a kind of...):
difficultness; difficulty (the quality of being difficult)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "hardship"):
sternness (the quality (as of scenery) being grim and gloomy and forbidding)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Something that causes or entails suffering
Example:
the many hardships of frontier life
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("hardship" is a kind of...):
bad luck; misfortune (unnecessary and unforeseen trouble resulting from an unfortunate event)
Sense 3
Meaning:
A state of misfortune or affliction
Example:
a life of hardship
Synonyms:
adversity; hard knocks; hardship
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("hardship" is a kind of...):
bad luck; ill luck; misfortune; tough luck (an unfortunate state resulting from unfavorable outcomes)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "hardship"):
ill-being (lack of prosperity or happiness or health)
catastrophe; disaster (a state of extreme (usually irremediable) ruin and misfortune)
extremity (an extreme condition or state (especially of adversity or disease))
distress (a state of adversity (danger or affliction or need))
affliction (a state of great suffering and distress due to adversity)
victimization (adversity resulting from being made a victim)
low-water mark; nadir (an extreme state of adversity; the lowest point of anything)
Context examples:
I thought that if I had been he, I would have tried to do it, at the cost of almost any hardship.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
They were all in high spirits and good humour, eager to be happy, and determined to submit to the greatest inconveniences and hardships rather than be otherwise.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
“There is no hardship, I suppose, nothing unpleasant,” said Edmund, “in going on the barouche box.”
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Cannot you invent a few hardships for yourself, and be contented to stay?
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
For myself, my term of service in India had trained me to stand heat better than cold, and a thermometer at ninety was no hardship.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
His life spread out before him in a series of pictures of danger and daring, hardship and toil.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Knowing how men and women are affected by the hardship of living in deprivation can help focus mental health treatment.
(Depression - men far more at risk than women in deprived areas, University of Cambridge)
The waiting was tiresome and wearing, and at last they grew vexed that Oz should treat them in so poor a fashion, after sending them to undergo hardships and slavery.
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)
I gave him the promise he required; but at the same time protested, “that I would suffer the greatest hardships, rather than return to live among Yahoos.”
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Researchers have now looked at the genomes of all seven watermelon species, creating a resource that could help plant breeders find wild watermelon genes that offer resistance to pests, diseases, drought and other hardships, and improve fruit quality.
(Harvesting genes to improve watermelons, National Science Foundation)
