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suffer

verb
/ˈsʌfə/UK/ˈsʌfɚ/US

Etymology

From Middle English suffren, from Anglo-Norman suffrir, from Latin sufferre (“to offer, hold up, bear, suffer”), from sub- (“up, under”) + ferō (“to carry”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- (“to bear, carry”). Displaced native Old English þrōwian.

  1. derived from *bʰer-✻ — “to bear, carry”
  2. derived from sufferō — “to offer, hold up, bear, suffer”
  3. derived from sofrir
  4. inherited from suffren

Definitions

  1. To undergo hardship.

    • Many artists suffer before becoming famous.

  2. To feel pain.

    • At least he didn't suffer when he died in the car crash.

  3. To become worse.

    • If you keep partying like this, your school-work will suffer.
    • Our correspondent found that timekeeping had suffered following the substitution of Class 5 4-6-0s on these workings.
  4. ›+ 2 more definitions

    1. To endure, undergo.

      • I've been suffering your insults for years.
      • We hope you never have to suffer the same pain.
      • If you may pleaſe to thinke I loue the King, / And through him, what’s neereſt to him, which is / Your gracious ſelfe; embrace but my direction, / If your more ponderous and ſetled proiect may ſuffer alteration.

    2. To allow.

      • Thou shalt not suffer a witch to liue.
      • But Iesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come vnto me: for of such is þe kingdome of heauen.
      • These constitute the important inflectional changes that have taken place in Modern English. There are other grammatical changes, mostly syntactical in their nature, into which the limits of this work do not suffer us to enter.

The neighborhood

Derived

insufferable, outsuffer, sufferability, sufferable, sufferance, suffer by comparison, sufferer, sufferfest, suffer fools gladly, gladly suffer fools, suffer from, suffering, suffer in silence, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must, unsufferable, unsuffered

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at suffer. 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.

01suffer02hardship03badly04unwell05menstruant06menstruating07menstruate08undergo

A definitional loop anchored at suffer. 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 suffer

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