throe
Pluralthroes
Pluralthroes
- 1A severe pain of labor or childbirth, or the suffering felt as a person dies.
With every throe, the laboring woman gripped the midwife's hand.
He watched his father slip into the throes of death.
Similarcontraction, pang, agony, pain
Note
Usually plural, and usually inside a fixed frame: the throes of labor, the throes of death, death throes. The singular survives in verse. Shelley pictures the earth "shuddering with a mother's throe" in The Masque of Anarchy (1819). In ordinary prose, though, the plural is the safe choice, and the singular will sound literary.
- 2A hard struggle, especially one tied to the beginning or completion of a demanding task.
The nation was in the throes of revolution when the treaty was signed.
Each throe of the merger negotiations tested the executives' patience.
Similarstruggle, turmoil, midst, grip
Note
The figurative heir of the pains of labor and death, and like them almost always plural. Its natural home is the phrase in the throes of, as in revolution, a merger, or puberty. Because the struggle belongs to a beginning or an ending, it pairs easily with words that mark the stage. A. A. Dowd writes of a boy who has "entered the early throes of puberty."
- 3A severe pang or spasm, especially a sudden, overwhelming outburst of feeling.
A throe of nausea passed through him as the ship rolled.
Throes of rage overtook the crowd as the verdict was read.
Similarwave, pang, spasm, fit, paroxysm
Note
Here the word loosens its tie to the pangs of birth and death and covers any convulsion of body or feeling. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe suffers "Throws and Pangs of Appetite." James Thomson's heart swells "with gentle throws" of joy. Pang is its constant companion, and the feeling need not even hurt. What matters is the sudden, overwhelming surge.
- 4A severe pang or spasm of pain, such as the contractions of childbirth or the agony of approaching death.
Each throe of the spasm left him weaker than the last.
She cried out as the throes of labor intensified.
Similarpang, spasm, paroxysm, convulsion, contraction
Note
The sense closest to the word's roots: Middle English throu or throwe already named the pangs of giving birth and pain in general. Older writers spell it throw. Spenser's "that last bitter throw" in The Faerie Queene (1590) is a death pang, and John Gerard's Herball (1597) speaks of the "throwes" women have "in their childing." Today the spelling throe keeps the noun distinct from the verb throw.
Less common meanings
- 5To struggle in extreme pain; to be in agony.
The condemned prisoners throe in their cells through the final night.
[W]hile yet he gazed at the wonderful countenance, his memory began to throe and struggle.
1880, Lew[is] Wallace, Ben-HurSimilarsuffer, ache, agonize, hurt, pain
Note
The sufferer's side of the verb, with past tense throed. It is obsolete, yet Lew Wallace still reaches for it in Ben-Hur (1880): "his memory began to throe and struggle." There the agony is mental rather than bodily. In modern writing it reads as deliberate archaism. Ache, or the old word thole (to endure), sit nearest in meaning.
- 6To cause someone to writhe in agony, as if in the pangs of childbirth.
Guilt throed him night after night.
Pre-thee ſay on, / The ſetting of thine eye, and cheeke proclaime / A matter from thee; and a birth, indeed, / Which throwes thee much to yeeld.
1610, William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”Similartorture, torment, afflict, hurt, agonize
Note
An obsolete verb best left to readers of Shakespeare. In The Tempest, a speaker's face shows "a birth, indeed, / Which throwes thee much to yeeld." The image is of a thought so weighty that bringing it out costs labor pains. The verb makes agony something done to a person, close to afflict or torture, while its intransitive partner makes it something a person undergoes.
- 7A cleaving tool with a blade set at a right angle to the handle, used to split staves or shingles from a block of wood.
The cooper drove the throe down the grain to free a clean stave.
With a few blows, she rived the shingles from the block using a throe.
Note
A different word altogether that happens to share the spelling. It is probably a variant of froe, the splitting tool used to rive cask staves and shingles, and it has nothing to do with pain. This spelling is obsolete. Frow is another old form, and froe is the name to use for the tool today.
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Origins
The noun probably comes partly from Middle English throu, throwe, meaning uterine contractions in childbirth, pain, or emotional distress, perhaps from Old English þrawu, a variant of þrēa ("affliction, torment"), and related to Old English þrōwian ("to endure, suffer") and Old Norse þrá ("longing"), all going back to Proto-Germanic *þrawō ("longing, suffering"). The current spelling is a 16th-century variant, perhaps to avoid confusion with "throw," and the verb comes from the noun.
Perhaps a variant of "froe."