LONG-SUFFERING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does long-suffering mean? 

• LONG-SUFFERING (noun)
  The noun LONG-SUFFERING has 1 sense:

1. patient endurance of pain or unhappiness

  Familiarity information: LONG-SUFFERING used as a noun is very rare.

• LONG-SUFFERING (adjective)
  The adjective LONG-SUFFERING has 1 sense:

1. patiently bearing continual wrongs or trouble

  Familiarity information: LONG-SUFFERING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LONG-SUFFERING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Patient endurance of pain or unhappiness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

long-sufferance; long-suffering

Hypernyms ("long-suffering" is a kind of...):

endurance (the power to withstand hardship or stress)

• LONG-SUFFERING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Patiently bearing continual wrongs or trouble

Synonyms:

enduring; long-suffering

Context example:

a long-suffering and uncomplaining wife

Similar:

patient (enduring trying circumstances with even temper or characterized by such endurance)

 Context examples 

My Master was long-suffering: so will I be.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I answer that it was because I could see his mother’s face in his, and that for her dear sake there was no end to my long-suffering.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

If you cast your mind back to some of those narratives with which you have afflicted a long-suffering public, you will recognise how often the grotesque has deepened into the criminal.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“You, a graceless baggage, a foolish lack-brain, with no thought above the hemming of shifts. And he so kindly and hendy and long-suffering! You would—ha, you may well flee the room!”

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was in a way akin to that common habit of men and women troubled by real or fancied grievances, who periodically and volubly break their long-suffering silence and have their say till the last word is said.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Mrs. Hudson, the landlady of Sherlock Holmes, was a long-suffering woman.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

My dear Watson, said he, as he rose from the table and paced up and down the room, You are most long-suffering, but if I have told you nothing in the last three days, it is because there is nothing to tell.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)