suffer

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments  · 
“
Do our audiences suffer from a Hindi film complex?

View all »
Definitions (34)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (8)

  1. intransitive verb To feel pain or distress; sustain loss, injury, harm, or punishment.
  2. intransitive verb To tolerate or endure evil, injury, pain, or death. See Synonyms at bear1.
  3. intransitive verb To appear at a disadvantage: "He suffers by comparison with his greater contemporary” (Albert C. Baugh).
5 more from this dictionary »

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (13)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (11)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • Not to suffer is to perpetuate the evil. —  Practical Ethics
  • He adopted the motto, 'to suffer is to do,' '_il patire č anche operare_.' —  The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) 1809-1859
  • Yet she could do nothing but sit and suffer--suffer, oh, how deeply! —  Isabel Leicester A Romance by Maude Alma
  • For a time, death itself leaves the ache of an unsatisfied expectation, as if somehow the interrupted life must go on, and there is no change we make or suffer which is not denied by the sensation of daily habit. —  A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories
  • But their first experience of war in Flanders had been a short one: they were amongst the first to suffer from the German poison-gas, and a long furlough had resulted Mr. Linton and Norah had taken them to Ireland as soon as they were fit to travel; and the bogs and moors of Donegal, coupled with trout-fishing, had gone far to effect a cure. —  Captain Jim
More examples »
 

Tags

suffer hasn't been tagged yet.

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 115 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

misery ·  suffering ·  discomfort ·  humiliation ·  torture ·  misfortune ·  distress ·  woe ·  loneliness ·  pain ·  regret ·  toil

Used in the same contextWord Family

suffer:   suffered ·  suffering ·  suffers
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English suffren, from Old French sufrir, from Vulgar Latin *sufferīre, from Latin sufferre : sub-, sub- + ferre, to carry; see bher-1 in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from Middle English suffren, soffren, from Old French souffrir, soffrir, sueffrir, sueffrer, French souffrir = Spanish sufrir = Portuguese soffrer = Italian sofferire, soffrire, from Latin sufferre, carry or put under, hold up, bear, support, undergo, endure, suffer, from sub, under, + ferre = English bear.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/ˈsəfər/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about twice a day.

Recently looked up

vulture · rin · winder · rookery · Larousse

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

aithníonn ciaróg ciaróg eile · an sionnach i gcraiceann na caorach · lavar puercos con jabón es perder tiempo y jabón · procrastinate · its not like im ugly people tell me im pretty