Word.ws English Dictionary

painfull

painfull is the archaic spelling of painful.

Meaning of painful

Adjective

painful (comparative painfuller or more painful, superlative painfullest or most painful)

  1. Causing pain or distress, either physical or mental.
    • In a 2008 case report from India, doctors described removing a giant tonsillolith that was making it painful for a young patient to swallow.2009 September 1, Elizabeth Svoboda, “In Tonsils, a Problem the Size of a Pea”, in The New York Times
    Antonyms:
    painless, painfree
  2. Afflicted or suffering with pain (of a body part or, formerly, of a person).
    Antonyms:
    painless, painfree
  3. Requiring effort or labor; difficult, laborious.
    Synonyms:
    laborious, exerting
  4. (archaic) Painstaking; careful; industrious.
    • The men bestow their times in fishing, hunting, warres, and such manlike exercises, scorning to be seene in any woman-like exercise, which is the cause that the women be very painefull, and the men often idle.1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, Kupperman, published 1988, page 142
  5. (informal) Very bad, poor.
    • His violin playing is painful.

Forms of painfull

comparativemore painfull
superlativemost painfull

Questions about painfull

What is painfull the archaic spelling of?
Painfull is the archaic spelling of painful.

Words near painfull in the dictionary

  1. painfree
  2. painful
  3. painful bladder syndrome
  4. painful on the eyes
  5. painfulest
  6. painfull
  7. painfuller
  8. painfullest
  9. painfully
  10. painfulness
  11. painfulnesses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: painfull (page history and authors); painful (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.

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