struggle
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: derivation
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).
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”).
Affixes: -le
Inflected forms:
form: struggles
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: stroggell
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: strogell
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: struggles
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: struggling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: struggled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: struggled
pos: verb
tags: past
form: stroggell
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: strogell
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
Senses:
gloss: A contortion of the body in an attempt to escape or to perform a difficult task.
pos: noun
gloss: Strife, contention, great effort.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
examples: The struggle with ways and means had recommenced, more difficult now a hundredfold than it had been before, because of their increasing needs. Their income disappeared as a little rivulet that is swallowed by the thirsty ground. He worked night and day to supplement it.
R. Moskowitz charges cisgender readers to be as conscious and deliberate with our religious identities as transgender and gender non-conforming people are with theirs, arguing that holiness is only achieved through continuous and unrelenting struggle and change.
gloss: To strive, to labour in difficulty, to fight (for or against), to contend.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: During the centuries, the people of Ireland struggled constantly to assert their right to govern themselves.
Troutbeck is a tiny village midway between Penrith and Keswick in a very sparsely populated part of Cumberland, and it used to be said by facetious travellers that the reason why it ever had a station at all was to give the engine a rest after it had struggled up the long and trying incline from Threlkeld.
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.
Seeing the British establishment struggle with the financial sector is like watching an alcoholic who still resists the idea that something drastic needs to happen for him to turn his life around.
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.
The sheriff’s office released a compilation of bodycam footage Friday from deputies at the scene that shows them handcuffing Earl and pinning him down for more than 20 minutes as he struggles and repeatedly shouts for help.
At Par, 150207 is the unit for the 1416 to Newquay. It is quite tatty and lacks tables - but does have plug sockets. It sounds laboured as it leaves, and while it sounds like it's struggling as it tackles Luxulyan, it's not losing time.
gloss: To have difficulty with something.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: 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.
gloss: To strive, or to make efforts, with a twisting, or with contortions of the body.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: She struggled to escape from her assailant's grasp.
Orion hit a rabbit once; but though sore wounded it got to the bury, and, struggling in, the arrow caught the side of the hole and was drawn out. Indeed, a nail filed sharp is not of much avail as an arrowhead; you must have it barbed, and that was a little beyond our skill.
Derived words: armed struggle
class struggle
counterstruggle
death-struggle
power struggle
struggle-buggy
struggle bus
struggleful
struggleism
struggle kid
struggleless
struggle meal
struggle session
strugglesome
struggly
the struggle is real
struggler
struggling
unstruggling
Translations: