agony
Pluralagonies
- 1Pain so intense that it is extremely hard to bear.
The patient was in agony until the painkillers finally took effect.
She suffered agonies from a kidney stone on the long drive to the hospital.
Similartorment, anguish, torture, suffering
Oppositeecstasy
Note
The everyday meaning is a late arrival: agony came to mean extreme pain around 1600, after it had already named the struggle before death. It is now the sense nearly every reader hears first. The usual phrase is in agony (she cried out in agony), and the countable plural names separate bouts of it, as in suffered agonies.
- 2The final struggle of life in the moments just before death.
The wounded stag thrashed in its death agony before lying still.
Even in her final agony, the old queen tried to name an heir.
Similarthroes
Note
Since the 1540s agony has also named the struggle of the last moments of life. It usually comes with a qualifier, as in death agony, mortal agony or her final agony, which marks it off from plain extreme pain: the point here is the fight for life, not the hurt.
- 3The suffering of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, often written with a capital A.
The sermon dwelt on Christ's agony in Gethsemane on the night before the crucifixion.
A small panel showing the Agony in the Garden hangs above the altar.
Note
Here the word names one scene: Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. The King James Bible of 1611 says that, "being in an agonie," he prayed more earnestly. Written with a capital, the Agony is the episode itself, the Agony in the Garden of altarpieces and sermons; in lowercase, Christ's agony describes what he suffered there.
- 4A sudden, overwhelming outburst of joy, or more generally any keen emotion.
Reading the acceptance letter, he laughed and wept in an agony of happiness.
The crowd broke into agonies of delight as the final whistle blew.
Note
Strong feeling of any kind, delight included, could once be an agony: Pope's translation of the Odyssey has "cries and agonies of wild delight." The use is dated, and because readers now hear pain in the word, it reads clearly only when the emotion is named after it, as in an agony of joy or an agony of happiness. Without that, a reader will assume suffering.
- 5A violent contest or fierce struggle.
The world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations.
1849, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the SecondSimilarstruggle
Note
The meaning closest to the word's Greek roots: agṓn was a contest, and agōnía a struggle or competition. Macaulay's History of England speaks of a world "convulsed by the agonies of great nations," meaning their conflicts, not their pain. The sense is dated, and a modern reader will hear extreme pain in it almost every time; for a fierce contest today, struggle is the safer word.
Practice
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Origin
Entered English in the 14th century via Old French and Latin from Ancient Greek agōnía ("emulation, competition, struggle"), from agṓn ("contest"). It was used specifically of the struggle before death from the 1540s, and in the sense "extreme pain" from about 1600.