HARDSHIP

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does hardship mean? 

• HARDSHIP (noun)
  The noun HARDSHIP has 3 senses:

1. a state of misfortune or affliction

2. something hard to endure

3. something that causes or entails suffering

  Familiarity information: HARDSHIP used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HARDSHIP (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A state of misfortune or affliction

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

adversity; hard knocks; hardship

Context example:

a life of hardship

Hypernyms ("hardship" is a kind of...):

bad luck; ill luck; misfortune; tough luck (an unfortunate state resulting from unfavorable outcomes)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "hardship"):

ill-being (lack of prosperity or happiness or health)

catastrophe; disaster (a state of extreme (usually irremediable) ruin and misfortune)

extremity (an extreme condition or state (especially of adversity or disease))

distress (a state of adversity (danger or affliction or need))

affliction (a state of great suffering and distress due to adversity)

victimization (adversity resulting from being made a victim)

low-water mark; nadir (an extreme state of adversity; the lowest point of anything)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Something hard to endure

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

asperity; grimness; hardship; rigor; rigorousness; rigour; rigourousness; severeness; severity

Context example:

the asperity of northern winters

Hypernyms ("hardship" is a kind of...):

difficultness; difficulty (the quality of being difficult)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "hardship"):

sternness (the quality (as of scenery) being grim and gloomy and forbidding)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Something that causes or entails suffering

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Context example:

the many hardships of frontier life

Hypernyms ("hardship" is a kind of...):

bad luck; misfortune (unnecessary and unforeseen trouble resulting from an unfortunate event)

 Context examples 

“I hope it will not be too dreadful a hardship for you to make yourself a dress or two.”

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I am very sensible, madam, of the hardship to my fair cousins, and could say much on the subject, but that I am cautious of appearing forward and precipitate.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

In this one little was said of the hardships endured, the dangers faced, or the homesickness conquered.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

But the privations, or rather the hardships, of Lowood lessened.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

They bear few traces of the hardships which they are said to have undergone.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They were tired and weak, and their faces had the drawn expression of patience which comes of hardship long endured.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Deprived of this respite, I should have sunk under my hardships.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

A question about whether an individual feels their illness is or was a personal hardship for close family members.

(Illness is Personal Hardship for Close Family Members, NCI Thesaurus)

It makes physical and social activities difficult, creates work hardships, and may result in detrimental emotional conditions.

(Study finds link between long-term exposure to air pollution and emphysema, National Institutes of Health)

You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)