painfully

English

Etymology

From Middle English peinfully, paynefully, equivalent to painful +‎ -ly.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈpeɪnfəli/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Adverb

painfully (comparative more painfully, superlative most painfully)

1. In a painful manner; as if in pain.

   I limped painfully down the stairs.

   • 1906 January–October, Joseph Conrad, chapter IX, in The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale, London: Methuen & Co., […], published 1907, →OCLC; The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (Collection of British Authors; 3995), copyright edition, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1907, →OCLC, page 193:

     The unsufficiency and uncandidness of his answer became painfully apparent in the dead silence of the room.

2. (informal) Badly; poorly.

   That was the most painfully sung rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon” that I’ve ever heard.

Collocations

Some adjectives commonly collocating with painfully:

• painfully long
• painfully slow
• painfully boring
• painfully close
• painfully obvious

Translations

in a painful manner

• Catalan: dolorosament (ca)
• Esperanto: pene
• Finnish: kivuliaasti (fi), tuskallisesti (fi)
• French: douloureusement (fr), péniblement (fr)
• Galician: dolorosamente
• German: schmerzhaft (de)
• Hungarian: fájdalmasan (hu)
• Italian: dolorosamente (it)
• Polish: boleśnie (pl)
• Portuguese: dolorosamente (pt)
• Russian: боле́зненно (ru) (boléznenno), бо́льно (ru) (bólʹno), мучи́тельно (ru) (mučítelʹno)
• Spanish: dolorosamente (es)
• Swedish: plågsamt (sv)