I got a painful sunburn.
We can't ignore our country's painful history of slavery.
His questions brought up a lot of painful memories.
It was painful to watch.
Recent Examples on the WebRight now, however, with the war in Gaza a costly and painful burden for six months and counting, Netanyahu is risking a much wider war.—Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, TIME, 9 Apr. 2024 That task could be painful, but Bogle, now 79, had the empathy, even keel and inquisitiveness to pull it off.—Chris Vognar, Los Angeles Times, 8 Apr. 2024 Next came painful and unnecessary feeding tubes, a bogus epilepsy diagnosis and a falsehood that her daughter had leukemia, for which Dee Dee shaved her head often.—Danielle Bacher, Peoplemag, 5 Apr. 2024 In addition to being painful and, in some cases, impacting your ability to breastfeed comfortably, cracked nipples also open you up to the risk of infection.—Macaela MacKenzie, Allure, 5 Apr. 2024 But the visceral value of these objects sits uneasily beside the painful history of how some of them got there in the first place.—Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 4 Apr. 2024 Shin splints become painful when inflammation develops along the tendon and muscle tissue surrounding the tibia.—Daryl Austin, USA TODAY, 4 Apr. 2024 The most painful aspect of the economy is the jobs situation.—Alex Travelli, New York Times, 1 Apr. 2024 But that often painful process taught me that failure is okay.—Max Gellert, Forbes, 29 Mar. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'painful.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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