ordeal
awr deel
- n a severe or trying experience
- n a primitive method of determining a person's guilt or innocence by subjecting the accused person to dangerous or painful tests believed to be under divine control; escape was usually taken as a sign of innocence
- PTI made many efforts to contact him through intermediaries but they were unsuccessful; Denny largely avoids the media and rarely speaks about his ordeal.
- For almost a quarter of century, as life unfolded in the quiet Lower Austrian town of Amstetten, Elisabeth Fritzl was enduring an unimaginable ordeal behind the plain gray .