struggle

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To exert muscular energy, as against a material force or mass: struggled with the heavy load.
2. v. To be strenuously engaged with a problem, task, or undertaking: struggled with his math homework.
3. v. To make a strenuous effort; strive: struggled to be polite.
4. v. To contend or compete: "Right and wrong ... will ever continue to struggle” ( Abraham Lincoln).
5. v. To progress with difficulty: struggled through the novel.
6. v. To move or place (something) with an effort: struggled the heavy desk into the elevator.
7. n. The act of struggling.
8. n. Strenuous effort; striving.
9. n. Combat; strife: armed struggle.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To put forth violent effort, as in an emergency or as a result of intense excitation; act or strive strenuously against some antagonistic force or influence; be engaged in an earnest effort or conflict; labor or contend urgently, as for some object: used chiefly of persons, but also, figuratively, of things.
2. Synonyms Strive, etc. (see attempt); toil.
3. n. A violent effort; a strenuous or straining exertion; a strenuous endeavor to accomplish, avoid, or escape something; a contest with some opposing force: as, a struggle to get free; the struggle of death; a struggle with poverty.
4. n. Synonyms Endeavor. Effort, Exertion, Pains, Labor. Struggle. See strife. The above are in the order of strength.

Wiktionary

1. n. strife, contention, great effort
2. v. to strive, to labour in difficulty, to fight (for or against), to contend.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To strive, or to make efforts, with a twisting, or with contortions of the body.
2. v. To use great efforts; to labor hard; to strive; to contend forcibly.
3. v. To labor in pain or anguish; to be in agony; to labor in any kind of difficulty or distress.
4. n. A violent effort or efforts with contortions of the body; agony; distress.
5. n. Great labor; forcible effort to obtain an object, or to avert an evil.
6. n. Contest; contention; strife.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. make a strenuous or labored effort
2. n. an energetic attempt to achieve something
3. n. an open clash between two opposing groups (or individuals)
4. n. strenuous effort
5. v. climb awkwardly, as if by scrambling
6. v. to exert strenuous effort against opposition
7. v. be engaged in a fight; carry on a fight