The Only Use of
ordeal
in
To Kill a Mockingbird
- They put the women out in huts when their time came, whatever that was; they had no sense of family—I knew that'd distress Aunty—they subjected children to terrible ordeals when they were thirteen; they were crawling with yaws and earworms, they chewed up and spat out the bark of a tree into a communal pot and then got drunk on it.
p. 261.0ordeals = very difficult experiences
Definitions:
-
(1)
(ordeal) a very difficult or painful experience
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely, ordeal can refer to a primitive method of determining a person's guilt or innocence by subjecting the accused person to dangerous or painful tests believed to be under divine control. Escape or survival was usually taken as a sign of innocence.