Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A state of distress, affliction, difficulty, or need: tried to console them in their trouble; got in trouble with the police.
- n. A distressing or difficult circumstance or situation: I've had troubles ever since I took this job.
- n. A cause or source of distress, disturbance, or difficulty: The new recruits were a trouble to him.
- n. Effort, especially when inconvenient or bothersome: went to a lot of trouble to find this book.
- n. A condition of pain, disease, or malfunction: heart trouble; car trouble.
- n. Public unrest or disorder.
- n. An instance of this; a disturbance.
- n. Any of various conflicts or rebellions in Ireland or Northern Ireland, especially the period of social unrest in Northern Ireland beginning in 1969.
- v. To agitate; stir up.
- v. To afflict with pain or discomfort.
- v. To cause emotional strain or anxiety to; worry or distress.
- v. To inconvenience; bother: May I trouble you for directions?
- v. To take pains: They trouble over every detail.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To stir up; agitate; disturb; put into commotion.
- To disturb; interrupt or interfere with.
- To disturb in mind; annoy; vex; harass; afflict; distress; worry.
- To put to trouble, inconvenience, pains, or exertion of some kind: used conventionally in courteous requests: as, may I trouble you to shut the door?
- Synonyms Afflict, Distress, etc. (see afflict); perplex, agitate, plague, pester, badger, disquiet, make uneasy, anxious, or restless.
- To become turbid or cloudy.
- To take trouble or pains; trouble one's self; worry: as, do not trouble about the matter.
- n. Vexation; perplexity; worry; difficulties; trials; affliction.
- n. Annoyance; molestation; persecution.
- n. Disturbing, annoying, or vexatious circumstance, affair, or state; distress; difficulty.
- n. A source or cause of annoyance, perplexity, or distress: as, he is a great trouble to us.
- n. Labor; laborious effort: as, it is no trouble.
- n. In law, particularly French law, anything causing injury or damage such as is the subject of legal relief.
- n. A disease, or a diseased condition; an affection: as, a cancerous trouble.
- n. In mining, a small fault. Also called a throw, slide, slip, heave, or check. = Syn. 1–3. Inconvenience, embarrassment, anxiety, adversity, misfortune, calamity, sorrow, tribulation, misery, plague, torment. See the verb.
- Same as troubly.
Wiktionary
- n. A distressful or dangerous situation.
- n. A difficulty, problem, condition, or action contributing to such a situation.
- n. A violent occurrence or event.
- n. Efforts taken or expended, typically beyond the normal required.
- n. A malfunction.
- n. Liability to punishment; conflict with authority.
- n. mining A fault or interruption in a stratum.
- v. transitive To disturb, stir up, agitate (a medium, especially water).
- v. transitive To mentally distress; to cause (someone) to be anxious or perplexed.
- v. transitive In weaker sense: to bother; to annoy, pester.
- v. To take pains to do something.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To put into confused motion; to disturb; to agitate.
- v. To disturb; to perplex; to afflict; to distress; to grieve; to fret; to annoy; to vex.
- v. To give occasion for labor to; -- used in polite phraseology.
- adj. obsolete Troubled; dark; gloomy.
- n. The state of being troubled; disturbance; agitation; uneasiness; vexation; calamity.
- n. That which gives disturbance, annoyance, or vexation; that which afflicts.
- n. (Mining) A fault or interruption in a stratum.
WordNet 3.0
- v. move deeply
- v. to cause inconvenience or discomfort to
- v. cause bodily suffering to and make sick or indisposed
- n. a source of difficulty
- v. take the trouble to do something; concern oneself
- n. a strong feeling of anxiety
- n. an event causing distress or pain
- n. an unwanted pregnancy
- n. an angry disturbance
- v. disturb in mind or make uneasy or cause to be worried or alarmed
- n. an effort that is inconvenient
Etymologies
- Verb is from Middle English troblen, from Old French trobler, from Medieval Latin *turbulare, from Latin turbula ("disorderly group, a little crowd or people"), diminutive of turba ("stir, crowd"). The noun is from Middle English troble, from Old French troble, (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French, from troubler, to trouble, from Vulgar Latin *turbulāre, alteration (influenced by Latin turbula, small group, diminutive of turba, crowd) of Late Latin turbidāre, from Latin turbidus, confused; see turbid. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Now, all that that means is this: I don't know what your trouble is, but, if money can cure it, you _haven't got any trouble_.”
“Although living under a monarchy, he could not help sneering at the kindness of those omnipotent governments who, in their paternal desire to spare the people they govern all trouble, would like to spare them even the trouble of thinking.”
“Annie said she thought she would at least like to go to the seaside somewhere during the summer, but "No," Lyra said; "it would be too much trouble, and you know, Annie, I always did hate _trouble_.”
“That's also why cars from financially distressed companies lose their value -- part of the reason why companies like Chrysler are in trouble is because they depended on these large fleet purchases, which artificially inflate sales numbers but decrease the value of the vehicles.”
“ROBERTS: Well, and the Republicans tried to answer that at the end of last week, because one of the reasons that they are in trouble is that this label of the party of no has been sticking to them to some degree.”
“The reason Bennett's in trouble is because he is a member of the political party that caused this economic meltdown in the first place.”
“Where businesses get in trouble is by making rules for which they cannot demonstrate a business utility, e.g.,”
“And I suppose it makes sense; the substance that got them in trouble is so widely available that only their own free will could stop them using it. viagra Says:”
Matthew Yglesias » By Request: Your Crime Control Policy On Drugs
“The only times we really get in trouble is when we kind of get one-on-one, '' Harpring said.”
“Instinct says a delay helps the Rays, because the team in trouble is usually most in need of a timeout.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘trouble’.
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Tati's list
comfortable
comfortable, avocado, avoid, beautiful, beer, bear, brief, breath, bug, bias, burn, case and 97 more...
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FUN - Beatles song titles
Typical words from Beatles song titles. Can you recreate the titles?
(Grammatical words have been omitted)polythene, Sun King, rhythm and blues, taxman, tripper, monkey business, mailman, matchbox, rock and roll, ooh, blue jay, reprise and 388 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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Words grabbed from real life conversa...
If I've seen it, heard it, or marvelled at it, I'll stick it here.
cruft, ermine, redundant, shakespearean, camino, marvelous, stupendous, chagrin, shaven, sleek, smug, stillness and 325 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
a, abandon, ability, able, abortion, about, above, abroad, absence, absolute, absolutely, absorb and 4334 more...
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loinfruit's Words
buddy, hungry, hug, want, you, i, mommy, school, ballet, sign, sign language, language and 170 more...
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-bles
fine find endings
able, amble, bable, cable, cible, coble, dable, fable, gable, gible, tible, table and 241 more...
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Unusual and Random Words
My Favourite Kind
quagmire, soliloquy, aardvark, topaz, ardent, exquisite, pyromania, pyre, extravagant, obscure, quetzal, quibble and 199 more...
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Inner B
Words with the letter b within the word, not just as the initial or last letter.
remember, maybe, able, unable, nimble, cable, reusable, thimble, cymbal, capable, tremble, enable and 143 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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The things they carried (List 2)
Listening to this as an audio book for the second time. Tim O'Brien uses simple words and phrases to great effect. Very few unfamilar and big words . The writing style reminds me of words from Joh...
The, Things, They, Carried, meant, fond, By necessity,, presented to him, far beyond, against the brick..., reaching, taut and 2940 more...
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Turning and Twisting Tours
words in the nature of double spirals
swift, swerve, swirl, swivel, swarm, swag, swank, swoop, swinge, swarf, spire, esparto and 361 more...
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Theme Prompts
There's a fiction meme (mostly on Livejournal) where writers use words as a prompt for a short story snippet. I've been collecting the words that show up on these lists as prompts for creative writ...
white, black, gray, red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, violet, queen, king, prince and 407 more...
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let the wild rumpus start!
mischief of one kind...and another
tom foolery, caper, frolic, lark, rumpus, mischief, shenanigan, escapade, gambol, monkeyshine, revel, skylarking and 28 more...
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TT3 Lesson 35
aircraft, aboard, female, not at all, complex, male, would rather, could do with, chilly, suit yourself, smuggle, joke and 38 more...
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hustle & bustle
-le verbs
gargle, dangle, dingle, bristle, cajole, girdle, doodle, stumble, wamble, jostle, hustle, bustle and 61 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for trouble.

vanishedone I'm being told 'hemp, flax'. Aren't those tree radicals?
friesian.com/yinyang.htm (no idea how authoritative it is) says: 'It is sometimes said that the Chinese character for "trouble" shows two women under one roof. Such a character is possible, and would look like this see link, but there actually is no such Chinese character, though I understand that the myth lives on the internet.' Apr 20, 2008
plethora Everything I know about Chinese symbols I learned from Japanese kanji, but looking at the symbol I can see how that would work. It looks like this if anyone's interested: 麻 Apr 20, 2008
frindley The Chinese ideogram for "trouble" shows two women living under one roof.
(Disclaimer: I don't know Chinese, can anyone verify this?) Apr 20, 2008