Distressed

How to spell distressed

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce distressed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does distressed mean?

1. adjectiveSuffering from anxiety, sorrow, or severe strain.
2. adjectiveDeliberately given a worn, aged appearance, as with furniture or fabric.

Distressed in a sentence

• The distressed passengers waited hours for news of the delayed flight.

• The kitchen had a distressed oak table with charming scuffs along the edges.

• She sounded deeply distressed when she described the burglary to the officer.

• He sells distressed leather jackets that look decades old straight off the rack.

Where does distressed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Old French destresse, meaning 'constraint' or 'affliction', which in turn came from the Latin verb distringere, literally 'to draw apart' or 'to stretch tight', built from dis- 'apart' and stringere 'to draw tight or bind'. The same stringere root gives English 'strict', 'strain', and 'stringent', all carrying the sense of tightness or pressure. English took the noun 'distress' in the 1200s for hardship or suffering, and the adjective and verb forms followed soon after. The participle 'distressed', meaning afflicted with anxiety or hardship, was in regular use by the 1400s. In the twentieth century furniture trade it gained the practical sense of deliberately worn or aged, since binding and beating a surface 'stresses' it; the spelling keeps the doubled 's' from stringere plus the suffix, and the silent ending -ed often catches writers who hear only 'distrest'.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart, away)
• stress (from Latin stringere: to draw tight)
• -ed (past participle/adjective suffix)