struggle
nounEtymology
From Middle English struglen, stroglen, strogelen, of obscure origin. Cognate with Scots strugil (“to struggle, grapple, contend”). Perhaps from a variant of *strokelen, *stroukelen (> English stroll), from Middle Dutch struyckelen ("to stumble, trip, falter"; > Modern Dutch struikelen), the frequentative form of Old Dutch *strūkon (“to stumble”), from Proto-Germanic *strūkōną, *strūkēną (“to be stiff”), from Proto-Indo-European *strug-, *ster- (“to be stiff; to bristle, strut, stumble, fall”), related to Middle Low German strûkelen ("to stumble"; > Low German strükeln), Old High German strūhhēn, strūhhōn ("to stumble, trip, tumble, go astray"; > German strauchen, straucheln). Alternative etymology derives the base of struggle from Old Norse strúgr (“arrogance, pride, spitefulness, ill-will”) + -le (frequentative suffix), from Proto-Germanic *strūkaz (“stiff, rigid”), ultimately from the same Proto-Indo-European root above, which would make it cognate with dialectal Swedish strug (“contention, strife, discord”), Norwegian stru (“obstinate, unruly”), Danish struende (“reluctantly”), Scots strug (“difficulty, perplexity, a laborious task”).
- derived from *strūkaz✻
- derived from strúgr
- derived from *strug-✻
- derived from *strūkōną✻
- derived from *strūkon✻
- derived from struyckelen
- inherited from struglen
Definitions
A contortion of the body in an attempt to escape or to perform a difficult task.
Strife, contention, great effort.
To strive, to labour in difficulty, to fight (for or against), to contend.
- During the centuries, the people of Ireland struggled constantly to assert their right to govern themselves.
- England were ponderous with ball in hand, their runners static when taking the ball and their lines obvious, while their front row struggled badly in the scrum.
›+ 2 more definitionsshow fewer
To have difficulty with something.
- One of the doctor’s patients struggled with depression.
- Then our first effort must be to identify the actual words. Only after recognizing them individually can we begin to try to understand them, to struggle with perceiving what they mean.
To strive, or to make efforts, with a twisting, or with contortions of the body.
- She struggled to escape from her assailant's grasp.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
A definitional loop anchored at struggle. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.
A definitional loop anchored at struggle. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.
8 hops · closes at struggle
curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA