2 uses
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Definition
a very difficult or painful experience
- To her and her like, birth itself was an ordeal of degrading personal compulsion, whose gratuitousness nothing in the result seemed to justify, and at best could only palliate.6 — The Convert (88% in)
- His parents had naturally desired to see her once at least before he carried her off to a distant settlement, English or colonial; and as no opinion of theirs was to be allowed to change his intention, he judged that a couple of months' life with him in lodgings whilst seeking for an advantageous opening would be of some social assistance to her at what she might feel to be a trying ordeal—her presentation to his mother at the Vicarage.4 — The Consequence (70% in)
There are no more uses of "ordeal" in Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
Typical Usage
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