Word.ws English Dictionary

excruciating

Syllables: ex·cru·ci·a·tingUK/ɪkˈskɹuːʃi.eɪtɪŋ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/ɪkˈskɹʉwʃɪjɛjtɪŋ/

excruciating adjective: causing great pain or anguish, agonizing.

Adjective

excruciating (comparative more excruciating, superlative most excruciating)

  1. Causing great pain or anguish, agonizing
    • Sagan faced an excruciating dilemma: Should he remain true to his naturalistic philosophy and reject the marrow graft as something acquired by immoral means? Or should he agree to undergo the medical treatment in hope of saving his life2011, Charles Colson, Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live?
    Synonyms:
    lacerating, poignant
  2. Exceedingly intense; extreme
    • When he at last opened his eyes, he was conscious of nothing but an excruciating pain through his temples. He was vaguely aware of unfamiliar surroundings.1922, Agatha Christie, “Chapter 16”, in The Secret Adversary

excruciating meaning in Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

excruciating in Bengali

প্রচন্ড ব্যথা, পীড়া, পীড়াদায়ক, অতিমাত্রায় তীব্র, চরম

excruciating in Malayalam

severe, agonizing, acute
മർമ്മഭേദകമായ, കഠിനവേദനയുളവാക്കുന്ന, മർമ്മഭേദി, മർമ്മാവിത്ത്, അരുന്തുദ, മർമ്മച്ഛിത്ത്

excruciating in Kannada

ಅತಿ ವೇದನೆಯನ್ನುಂಟುಮಾಡುವ, ಯಾತನಾಮಯ, ಅತಿನೋವಿನ, ತುಂಬಾ ನೋಯುವ, ತಳಮಳಗೊಳಿಸುವ

Examples of excruciating in a sentence

  • My cringeometer went off the scale as I watched his excruciating performance.
  • The past few days of the Harris campaign were an increasingly excruciating riot of celebrity bandwagonning.
  • No pickle-tickle." Freud understood that too much tension and disjunction might be unpleasurable and even excruciating.

All 13 example sentences with excruciating

Synonyms of excruciating

Forms of excruciating

comparativemore excruciating
superlativemost excruciating

Origin of excruciating

Present participle of excruciate, from Latin excruciō, from ex- + cruciō (“to torment”).

Words formed from excruciating

Questions about excruciating

What does excruciating mean?
Excruciating means causing great pain or anguish, agonizing.
What is excruciating in Bengali?
Excruciating in Bengali is প্রচন্ড ব্যথা, পীড়া, পীড়াদায়ক. See Excruciating meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is excruciating?
Excruciating is an adjective.
How do you pronounce excruciating?
Excruciating is pronounced /ɪkˈskɹuːʃi.eɪtɪŋ/ (UK).

Words near excruciating in the dictionary

  1. excruciable
  2. excruciate
  3. excruciated
  4. excruciates
  5. excruciateth
  6. excruciating
  7. excruciatingly
  8. excruciation
  9. excruciations
  10. excruciator
  11. excruciators

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: excruciating (page history and authors); excruciating (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); excruciating (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); excruciating (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-excruciating.ogg, en-au-excruciating.ogg.

Cite this entry: “excruciating.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/excruciating. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.