anguish

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English anguisse, later angwisshe,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Anglo-Norman anguisse, also angoisse,^[5][6][7] now French angoisse,^[5][7] from Latin angustia (“narrowness, tightness; in the plural, straits, distress”),^{[5][8][9][10]} from angustus (“narrow”),^[5][3][9] which is related to angō (“to choke, throttle, torment”).^{[8][9][4][11]} Etymonline traces these to Proto-Indo-European *angh- (“tight, painfully constricted”),^[8][3] and Hoad and Ayto compare Ancient Greek ἄγχω (ánkhō, “to squeeze, strangle”).^[7][12] The English ending was remade as -ish in the 14th century.^[12][9] The verb is angwisshen,^[8][13] from angoissier,^[8][13][10] from angustiō (“to distress”).^[13][5][10] Anger, angina and anxious come from the same root.^[12][14][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Bodily pain, especially intense pain; agony: about 1225, in Hali Meiðhad.^[5] Mental suffering is recorded at about the same date, in the Ancrene Riwle,^[5][9] which Barnhart dates to probably before 1200.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The word took over the figurative sense of the Latin: angustia meant narrowness or tightness, and in the plural, straits or distress.^[5][15] Ayto compares the phrase in dire straits, where strait once meant narrow.^[12] In Anglo-Norman the noun already covered physical pain, mental suffering, anxiety and rage.^[6][8] Both the physical and the mental sense are recorded in English from the 13th century, and plural anguishes, bouts of suffering, from the Wycliffite Bible until the 1670s.^[5] From about 1330 it also meant a cause of distress.^[5] Johnson (1755) noted that applied to the mind it meant the pain of sorrow.^[16] The verb is recorded from 1340, transitive, to distress;^[5] from before 1400 it was also intransitive, to suffer anguish, now often in the weakened sense "to fret or worry".^[5] In Surrey, Hampshire and Cornwall dialect anguish meant inflammation, and in Somerset the moisture that oozes from a wound.^[17]

Timeline

• c. 1225 – intense bodily pain.^[5]
• c. 1225 – severe mental suffering.^[5]
• c. 1330 – a cause of distress.^[5]
• 1340 – verb, to afflict with mental pain.^[5]
• before 1400 – verb, to suffer anguish.^[5]
• 1477 – adjective anguish, painful (obsolete by 1532).^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. Extreme mental distress or grief: the anguish of the waiting families.^[18][13][5]
2. Severe physical pain; agony.^[18][13][5]

Verb

1. To feel anguish; to suffer or worry intensely: He anguished over the decision for weeks.^[13][5][18]
2. To cause someone anguish; to torment.^[13][5][18]

Word family

• anguished

Related words

• anger
• angina
• anxious
• angostura
• quinsy

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
3. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
7. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
10. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
13. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
14. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
15. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
18. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins