a state of acute pain
"The patient's screams were filled with suffering as the surgeon removed the infected tooth."
The condition of someone who suffers; a state of pain or distress.
"Her silent suffering was more evident than any scream she could have made."
In plain English: Suffering is the feeling of being in pain or going through something really hard.
"The entire family shared in his suffering after he lost his job."
Usage: Use suffering as an uncountable noun to describe the general experience of pain, grief, or hardship rather than counting individual instances. Avoid using it interchangeably with "suffer," which is strictly a verb describing the act of enduring something unpleasant.
present participle of suffer
"The firefighter rushed to help the family, whose screams cut through the air as they watched their home burn down in suffering."
In plain English: To suffer means to feel pain or go through something very hard.
"After working all day, he suffered from a sharp headache that wouldn't go away."
Experiencing pain.
"After falling off his bike, he spent hours lying on the grass while his mother watched him in agony from the suffering of a broken leg."
"The suffering refugees needed immediate help from the volunteers."
The word suffering is formed by combining the verb suffer with the suffix -ing to create a noun meaning the state of enduring pain or hardship. This construction follows the standard pattern for turning actions into nouns in English rather than deriving from an older foreign root.