adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a painful dilemma (=a very difficult one)
▪ She faced the painful dilemma of having to decide whether to tell the police about her son's crimes.
a painful divorce (=causing a lot of sadness)
▪ I have been through a painful divorce, and know what it feels like.
a painful memory (=very upsetting)
▪ He sobbed as he relived the painful memory.
a painful ordeal (=a very bad or painful experience)
▪ The treatment she had to go through was a painful ordeal.
a painful/uncomfortable reminder
▪ This violence is a painful reminder that peace is still a long way away.
difficult/painful
▪ She has had to make the difficult transition from child actor to adult star.
painful (=one that is very upsetting)
▪ Her family supported her through the painful experience.
painful (=one that is difficult to deal with)
▪ Painful emotions, stored away in the patient’s memory, can suddenly come flooding back.
the sad/painful truth (=something that is true but that you regret)
▪ She still misses him, and that’s the sad truth.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
almost
▪ Coldness flew out at her and it was unnatural, almost painful.
▪ The desolate quietness was almost painful.
▪ The servant started toward the company with full and foaming bowl, holding it out before him with almost painful care.
as
▪ A lot of what follows is as painful as pulling teeth.
▪ Imagery offers another approach to aversion therapy which is not as painful or invasive as the procedures mentioned above.
▪ It must surely be much more pleasant and by no means as painful to work with friendly and docile ferrets.
▪ That thorny subject, if he but knew it, was as painful to her as it was to him.
▪ How can you conceive of something as painful, as hurting, without conceiving of it as hurting you?
▪ Surely, in conceiving of something that hurts, you necessarily conceive of it as painful to you.
▪ It isn't as painful as I thought it would be.
excruciatingly
▪ They were reconciled in the months before Brynner's excruciatingly painful death from cancer.
▪ An attacker can be quite literally tied up in an excruciatingly painful arm twist in seconds.
▪ Unfortunately, half way through it loses the plot and its authenticity and sadly slips into excruciatingly painful white boy reggae mode.
extremely
▪ That would make it extremely painful to have gone short of sterling in the past few days.
▪ A sting from one of these results in an extremely painful wound.
▪ Her left arm was locked to her side, because her shoulder was extremely painful.
▪ But it is also extremely painful.
▪ At this stage, the arthritis in his fingers was scarcely bearable and writing extremely painful.
▪ This was an extremely painful time for the patients.
▪ Although their bite is extremely painful to man, they are not aggressive and most people are bitten while handling them.
▪ My eyebrows badly need plucking but I find it extremely painful.
how
▪ And how painful it's been at times to love you.
▪ But yes, he was wondering how painful the best might be.
▪ The deep recession that followed shows how painful true perestroika can be.
▪ As a physiotherapist, Roebuck knew how painful, demanding and difficult the recovery period and rehabilitating process would be.
▪ Didn't she realise how painful an accusation of that magnitude was?
less
▪ The final contractions are less painful and, indeed, pain varies a good deal between women and between births.
▪ His eye was less painful by now, but his head ached.
▪ Catheters and endoscopes can be used for safer and less painful investigations.
▪ Christmas, for Phil Prior and for her young son, was made less painful by the kindness of her neighbours.
▪ After all this time, Beth had hoped that the memories would be less painful.
▪ They say it makes the experience less painful for them and less traumatic for the baby.
more
▪ It was short, to the point, each sentence more painful than the last.
▪ It was a more complicated and more painful undertaking than Danny Ballow had had to face.
▪ The transition is even more painful if interest rates happen to be rising at the time.
▪ It is difficult to imagine a writer giving a character a more painful and courageous sentence.
▪ It is far more painful and exhausting to suppress our emotions than it is to experience them.
▪ The whistling became louder, more piercing, more painful.
▪ I am sure it will be even more painful as the reports come out.
most
▪ These are just as important and often the most painful types of fear.
▪ This is one of the most painful days.
▪ We, by contrast, are at present at the most painful phase of a radical readjustment.
▪ This day a year ago was the longest of my life, the most painful and sad.
▪ Such a friend can never help us honestly to confront the most painful aspects of our personalities.
▪ His refusal to forswear moonshine, however, mocked her with the most painful failure of all.
▪ I worked in the communities that experienced the most painful impact of the first of the Government's recessions in the 1980s.
▪ Now the most painful way to call upon the public to sacrifice its claims is by taxing.
often
▪ For more than two years, he was chairman of the Czechoslovak parliament, overseeing the slow and often painful march to democracy.
▪ This has presented it with a series of new and often painful problems.
▪ However, the gestation and birth of new settlements is a tricky and often painful business that needs careful management.
▪ The novel is a humorous but often painful odyssey through the next three decades of Dolores' life.
particularly
▪ Usually the problem is quite minor, but anything particularly painful or persistent should always be checked.
▪ The rift between the two men was particularly painful since they had been so close at first.
▪ Most physical punishments used by parents are not intended to be, or experienced as, particularly painful.
▪ Having to be more separate can, for some people, resurrect memories of earlier separations which were particularly painful for them.
▪ To have hurt feelings is not a particularly painful kind of hurt.
so
▪ Her head was so painful that she hardly knew what she was seeing, except that there could be no doubt of it.
▪ In fact, the mere touching of an affected ear can be so painful as to interfere with sleep.
▪ Reality becomes so painful that the sufferer uses his or her substance or process of addiction in order to survive the emotional carnage.
▪ I mean, this must be all so painful for you.
▪ I was becoming so tense that my head, neck and even my eyes were always so painful.
▪ My ankle was so much swollen... and the bruise was so painful that I could get no rest.
▪ Why did life have to be so hard? So painful?
▪ My feet were sometimes so painful and swollen that I could only walk with my heels out of my shoes.
too
▪ Our friend Startop agreed to row instead of me, as my hands were still too painful.
▪ She was so emotionally fragile that being sober was simply too painful.
▪ Some of the memories were almost too painful to dwell upon.
▪ The enormity of what I have done, the trouble that I have caused my parents is too painful.
▪ Too much movement would have been too painful.
▪ Now she had trouble getting up and walking, gravity too painful for her.
▪ Just a small one, not too painful.
▪ Before it became too painful for you?
very
▪ The lymph nodes are very painful and can take up to ten days to burst and then exude a thick yellow pus.
▪ For many parents, watching their child in such a situation can be very painful!
▪ This was very painful, and made me cry aloud.
▪ The big purple grass burrs were very painful when we stepped on them.
▪ I kept expecting very painful things to come up: that's what I thought analysis was about.
▪ It was a terrible fall: humiliating and very painful.
▪ The glands become matted together and very painful to the touch.
■ NOUN
death
▪ They were reconciled in the months before Brynner's excruciatingly painful death from cancer.
▪ They all died slow, brutal, painful deaths.
▪ He was returned to the Bocardo Jail, from whose roof he watched the painful death by burning of Latimer and Ridley.
▪ In those cases, the creatures were harpooned and left to die slow, painful deaths.
▪ An alternative is gassing - again an unpleasant and painful death.
▪ She had a demonic nature, cursing all her subjects to dreadful sickness and painful deaths.
▪ He aimed for Benny's stomach - it would be a slower, more painful death that way.
▪ Given a meatless diet it will rapidly become ill and will then die a painful death.
decision
▪ I came to a bold and painful decision.
▪ Another painful decision involved the ongoing tension between Kistiakowsky and Seth Neddermeyer.
▪ In doing so they would deny Mr Ashdown the opportunity to take his painful decision.
▪ It is getting people to accept painful decisions without hurting them.
▪ But at last she came to a painful decision.
emotion
▪ He stepped back from the microphone and lowered his gaze, lost in painful emotion.
▪ Recounting the matter in present time-without being returned-the patient is using all the intervening years as buffers against the painful emotion.
▪ It does not matter whether the engram occurred two hours or ten years ago, painful emotion can be reduced from it.
▪ Physical pain in the contrasurvival chain can suppress painful emotion in the prosurvival chain.
▪ The third example of the painful emotion engram is the third type: loss of an ally by reversal.
▪ You are looking for a painful emotion engram, an instant of loss which will discharge.
▪ A knowledge of the painful emotion engram; 6.
▪ The painful emotion engram, however, does a rather smooth rise.
experience
▪ Breakfast was a painful experience for me.
▪ As with any painful experience, the parents may be much stronger after they have gone through these reactions together. 15.
▪ There were times when Rose felt as if she were split in half - an interesting rather than a painful experience.
▪ It can be a painful experience for viewing loved ones.
▪ United could have made it an even more painful experience for Bradford manager Paul Jewell.
▪ Like many, she has her own stock of painful experiences which sometimes affect her present life.
▪ Although a few had had quick and relatively painless births, many had found it a very painful experience.
▪ Through marriage he created the possibility of consciously knowing about and coming to terms with his own painful experience of loss.
memory
▪ He sobbed as he relived the painful memory.
▪ For many of us, these long winter nights stir up painful memories and fearful thoughts.
▪ Feeling her stomach churn with the painful memories, she leaned sideways and was violently sick.
▪ We have to drop the charge and put the painful memories on one side.
▪ The painful memory of last year's semi-final defeat by Kilkenny acts as another spur.
▪ But those painful memories are erased by thoughts of future glory as Jodami whisks Anthea across the moorland gallops.
▪ Maggie suddenly shuddered, and twisted away, her happy expression replaced by one of painful memories.
process
▪ This is usually a painful process which most authors secretly hate!
▪ Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab records the painful process of recovery.
▪ Sadly, though, we have in the past year been through the painful process of shedding a large number of jobs.
▪ Getting naked was a long and painful process, and involved finding out just how much punishment her body had taken.
▪ It's a difficult, demanding and, at times, painful process.
▪ Looking back on it, I think it was only part of the painful process of growing up.
▪ However, the termination of overdrafts is a painful process.
▪ He will now begin the physically and mentally painful process of taking male hormones to establish for the first time his masculinity.
reminder
▪ The ocean carried painful reminders of the hundreds of lives lost.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ painful shyness
▪ painful surgery
▪ painful, swollen knee-joints
▪ a slow painful death
▪ Colin's death is painful to me and everyone who knew him.
▪ events from her painful and troubled past
▪ For those involved, the scandal has been a very painful experience.
▪ His total humiliation was painful to watch.
▪ It's five years since we separated, but I still find the memories quite painful.
▪ It was so painful to see how frail she had become in just a few months.
▪ Jim's knee was still painful where he had fallen on it.
▪ The child suffered painful stomach cramps and vomiting after drinking one of the contaminated drinks.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But it can add up to a painful result.
▪ Each year the painful birth of birds brought more seeds, more bones, more wolves into the forest.
▪ In her misery, Aileen remembered with painful clarity when she'd first met Mac.
▪ More painful in many ways is the appalling loss of self-confidence and self-esteem.
▪ That means food aid, and it means more painful diplomacy in the search for peace.
▪ The transition from dualism to monism is painful.
▪ The treatment, in the early stages, could be painful, but it could also bring a release from pain.
▪ This was very painful, and made me cry aloud.