Distressing

How to spell distressing

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce distressing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does distressing mean?

1. adjectiveCausing anxiety, sorrow, or acute upset.
2. verbDeliberately wearing down a surface or material so that it looks aged or worn.

Distressing in a sentence

• adjective

  The news about the layoffs was deeply distressing for the whole department.

• verb

  He spent the afternoon distressing the new table to give it a rustic look.

• adjective

  She found the long wait for the test results extremely distressing.

• verb

  The workshop covered painting, sanding, and distressing the reclaimed wood.

Where does distressing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb distringere, which meant 'to stretch apart' or 'to hinder', built from dis- 'apart' and stringere 'to draw tight or bind' (the same root that gives us 'strict' and 'strain'). In Vulgar Latin the noun districtia developed the sense of hardship or constraint, and this passed into Old French as destresse, meaning suffering or hardship. English took the word in around the 1300s as 'distress', referring to severe trouble or anguish, and the participle form 'distressing' followed naturally to describe whatever causes such anguish. The spelling keeps the double s of 'stress', which is the part writers most often slip on, while the single s of dis- sits quietly in front. A later, gentler sense arose in craft and furniture work, where to distress a surface is to deliberately wear it down so it looks aged.

How the word is built

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