struggle
Forms
- Plural
- struggles
- present (v1)
- struggle
- past (v2)
- struggled
- past participle (v3)
- struggled
- present participle
- struggling
- 3rd person singular
- struggles
Definitions
1.A contortion of the body in an attempt to escape or to perform a difficult task.
- Nothing is achieved without struggle.
2.Strife, contention, great effort.
- Nothing is achieved without struggle.
1.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.
- Most train operators have reduced services with emergency timetables, as they struggle to cope with a rapid increase in staff absences due to the Omicron variant of COVID.
2.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.
3.To strive, or to make efforts, with a twisting, or with contortions of the body.
- She struggled to escape from her assailant's grasp.
Frequency
Overall
Common· #1743
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Rare
- General reading & writing
- Common
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Uncommon
Related words
Synonyms
Etymology
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).