Word Direct Answers

What does "pain" mean?

Pain: Any uneasy sensation in animal bodies, from slight uneasiness to extreme distress or torture, proceeding from a derangement of functions, disease, or injury by violence; bodily distress; bodily suffering; an ache; a smart. "The pain of Jesus Christ." Chaucer. Note: Pain may occur in any part of the body where sensory nerves are distributed, and it is always due to some kind of stimulation of them. The sensation is generally referred to the peripheral end of the nerve.

Additional senses

  1. 2.pl. Specifically, the throes or travail of childbirth. She bowed herself and travailed, for her pains came upon her. 1 Sam. iv.
  2. 3.4. Uneasiness of mind; mental distress; disquietude; anxiety; grief; solicitude; anguish. Chaucer. In rapture as in pain. Keble.
  3. 4.See Pains, labor, effort. Bill of pains and penalties. See under Bill. -- To die in the pain, to be tortured to death. [Obs.] Chaucer.
  4. 5.To inflict suffering upon as a penalty; to punish. [Obs.] Wyclif (Acts xxii. 5).
  5. 6.To put to bodily uneasiness or anguish; to afflict with uneasy sensations of any degree of intensity; to torment; to torture; as, his dinner or his wound pained him; his stomach pained him. Excess of cold, as well as heat, pains us. Lock 3. To render uneasy in mind; to disquiet; to distress; to grieve; as a child's faults pain his parents. I am pained at mJer. iv.
  6. 7.To pain one's self, to exert or trouble one's self; to take pains; to be solicitous. [Obs.] "She pained her to do all that she might." Chaucer.

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