Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Agony
/ˈæɡəni/noun
Extreme physical or mental suffering.
The Greek roots
ἀγωνία
agōnía
struggle for victory
Literally: “contest-struggle”
Follow a root:ἀγωνία1 word
The story of the word
Agōn was the assembly gathered to watch the games, then the contest itself, and agōnia the strain of competing in it. The word turned toward pain through the Gospel of Luke, which uses it for Christ in Gethsemane, and English inherited that religious sense in the fourteenth century before any bodily one. Protagonist and antagonist come from the same contest.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
agoniseprotagonistantagonistagonistic
In a sentence
He waited three weeks for the result, in agony the whole time.