agony

[ ag-uh-nee ]

SEE DEFINITION OF agony

EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR AGONY

With parched throats, gasping for breath, they lay back in agony.

He awaited, in an agony of suspense, the rattle of the musketry.

And she had died in agony, so that she, Harriett, might keep her hundred pounds.

Agony by agony, something is gained, and my personal agony counts with the rest.

"Hear me," he went on, in an agony of entreaty mingled with something like anger.

The biting finger of agony had drawn lines upon his haggard brow.

She wrung her hands in agony, distressed that she could not at once repair the evil she had done.

Cora folded Alice to her bosom in agony, and Duncan sprang to his feet.

It had become an agony of suffering for the man to fight off sleep longer.

Josie was lingering on the doorstep in an agony of untrained coquetry.

WORD ORIGIN

late 14c., "mental suffering" (especially that of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane), from Old French agonie, agoine "anguish, terror, death agony" (14c.), and directly from Late Latin agonia, from Greek agonia "a (mental) struggle for victory," originally "a struggle for victory in the games," from agon "assembly for a contest," from agein "to lead" (see act (n.)). Sense of "extreme bodily suffering" first recorded c.1600.