painfulness
- n emotional distress; a fundamental feeling that people try to avoid
- n the quality of being painful
she feared the painfulness of childbirth
- But her scenes are memorable in proportion to their painfulness.
- He spent his ministry, he wrote, "in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness," finding himself "in perils .
- The doctors decide each case separately, considering such matters as the painfulness of the treatment and the patient's chance for happiness during his possible remission.