Ordeal

How to spell ordeal

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ordeal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ordeal mean?

1. nounA prolonged, difficult, or distressing experience that someone has to endure.

Ordeal in a sentence

• The long delay at customs turned the journey into a real ordeal.

• Recovering from the surgery was an ordeal that lasted several weeks.

Where does ordeal come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Ordeal is a genuinely native word, descending from the Old English ordāl or ordēl, which meant a 'judgment' or 'verdict'. It is built from an old Germanic intensive prefix (related to the German ur-) attached to a root meaning 'to deal out' or 'apportion', so the word literally pictured a sentence being dealt out. Its close German cousin Urteil still means 'judgment' or 'verdict' today, which shows how steady the sense once was. In early medieval law an ordeal was a very specific thing: a trial in which an accused person was subjected to a painful or dangerous test, such as grasping hot iron or being plunged in water, on the belief that divine judgment would protect the innocent. From that severe legal procedure the meaning softened into the modern sense of any harrowing, prolonged experience. The unexpected spelling, with the silent ancestry of 'deal' inside it, is worth fixing in mind: ordeal is simply or- placed before the familiar word deal.

How the word is built

• or- (Old English intensive prefix meaning 'out, thoroughly')
• deal (from dǣlan, to deal out or apportion a judgment)