Both Uses of
ordeal
in
Light in August
- And then—save for the concomitant ordeal of cleanliness—it was music that pleased the ear and words that did not trouble the ear at all—on the whole, pleasant, even if a little tiresome.†
Chpt 6 *ordeal = very difficult or painful experience
- Yet on the first time that he deliberately looked again toward the house, he felt a shocking surge and fall of blood; then he knew that he had been afraid all the time that she would be in sight, that she had been watching him all the while with that perspicuous and still contempt; he felt a sensation of sweating, of having surmounted an ordeal.†
Chpt 11
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.