hardship

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English

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Etymology

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From Middle English hardshipe, equivalent to hard +‎ -ship.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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hardship (countable and uncountable, plural hardships)

  1. Difficulty or trouble; hard times.
    He has survived periods of financial hardship before.
    • 1962 December, “Dr. Beeching previews the plan for British Railways”, in Modern Railways, page 377:
      If train services of this kind were to be cut off, without any provision of alternative services, there would, of course, be hardship in some cases.
    • 2020 May 20, Philip Haigh, “Ribblehead: at the heart of the S&C's survival and its revival”, in Rail, page 26:
      The TUCC's role was to assess what (if any) hardship a BR closure proposal would cause, and to make recommendations to ministers who would have the final say.
  2. A burden, a source of difficulty that could impose a barrier.
    When you visit the museum, we invite you to make a donation of $10 if this will not be a hardship.

Antonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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Verb

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hardship (third-person singular simple present hardships, present participle hardshipping, simple past and past participle hardshipped)

  1. (transitive) To treat (a person) badly; to subject to hardships.
    • 1969, Tract Series, numbers 96-129, page 529:
      [] an adjustment of the income tax could easily produce the twenty millions without hardshipping any industrious person in the community []
    • 1970, Reading Reform Foundation, The Annual Reading Reform Foundation Conference, page 47:
      Although we lost the election by the narrowest of margins, the people of Oregon heard a great deal about education, and particularly about how "look-say" reading instruction was hardshipping Oregon school children.