Hassle

How to spell hassle

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hassle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hassle mean?

1. nounAn irritating inconvenience or source of difficulty and bother.
2. verbTo repeatedly bother, pester, or harass someone.

Hassle in a sentence

• noun

  Renewing the passport turned out to be a real hassle.

• verb

  Street vendors tend to hassle tourists near the main square.

• noun

  Online check-in saves the hassle of queuing at the airport.

• verb

  The salesman kept trying to hassle her into upgrading the plan.

Where does hassle come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

Hassle is a relatively young word whose origins are genuinely murky, which is why etymology_confidence here is low. It surfaced in mid twentieth century American English, first recorded in the 1940s and 1950s, initially in the sense of a noisy argument or a confused struggle. The most popular guess is that it is a blend of 'haggle', meaning to argue over a price, and 'tussle', meaning a rough scuffle, with the spelling and rhythm of both feeding into it. Some scholars instead connect it to a southern United States dialect word for harassing hunting dogs, and others note the faint echo of 'harass'. Whatever its true parent, it settled quickly into both a noun for irritating trouble and a verb for pestering someone, and the doubled 's' followed by the quiet '-le' ending is exactly the part that trips up writers.

How the word is built

• hass- (uncertain root, perhaps a blend of 'haggle' and 'tussle')
• -le (frequentative suffix)