Other forms: ordeals
An ordeal is a painful experience that has to be got through. A terrible ordeal, the ordeal of the trial, survive the ordeal.
The original was a legal test by fire or water, where surviving it was held to prove innocence, and the church abandoned the practice in 1215. The modern sense keeps the sense of something endured rather than chosen.
1nounordealA painful experience that has to be got through.
“After three days lost in the mountains, the hikers were exhausted by their ordeal.”
ordeal is an experience.
Old English ordal names a judgement by trial, from a Germanic root meaning to deal out.
Proto-West Germanic
*uʀdailī — judgement
Old English
ordēl
Medieval Latin
ordālium
Middle English
ordel
English, today
ordeal
Built from
From Middle English ordel, ordal, from Medieval Latin ordālium or inherited from its source Old English ordēl, ordāl (“ordeal, judgement”), from Proto-West Germanic uʀdailī (“judgement”) literally “an out-dealing”, from uʀdailijan (“to deal out; dispense”). For more, see or-, deal. Cognate with stq Uurdeel (“judgement; verdict”), West Frisian oardiel (“judgement”), Dutch oordeel (“judgement, discretion”), Low German Oordeel (“judgement; verdict”), German Urteil (“judgement, verdict”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA