Other forms: hardships
Hardship is suffering caused by difficult conditions. Financial hardship, endure hardship, cause hardship.
It is usually material — money, housing, food — and in administrative language hardship is a defined category that unlocks help: a hardship fund, a hardship claim. Undue hardship is a legal test. Note that hardship means the condition rather than a single event, so it lasts; and that -ship here is the old suffix meaning state or condition, the same one in friendship and hardship's cousin, worship.
1nounhardshipSuffering caused by difficult conditions.
“The family faced great hardship after the harvest failed.”
hardship is suffering from conditions.
Middle English hardshipe is hard plus -ship, the suffix meaning state or condition. Friendship, worship and township are built the same way, and it has nothing to do with ships.
Middle English
hardshipe
English, today
hardship
From Middle English hardshipe, equivalent to hard + ship.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA