as in fires
a test of faith, patience, or strength
the hikers were finally rescued after a three-day ordeal in the wilderness
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Recent Examples of ordeals
Can Arsenal survive four more ordeals?
—
Matt Slater, New York Times, 26 Apr. 2026
Others have also turned their personal ordeals into stories of inspiration.
—Brian Steinberg, Variety, 3 Apr. 2026
The medical ordeals are traumatic and disgusting, but fascinating and full of the quirks of modern life.
—Kelly Lawler, USA Today, 8 Jan. 2026
Both women survived, but are still reeling from ordeals that have drawn national attention — in part, because they were captured on video and shared on social media.
—CBS News, 3 Dec. 2025
On Instagram, and even on her reality show, Kardashian comes across as thrillingly impervious, wearing impassivity like body armor and putting her body and face through Olympian ordeals to draw our collective gaze.
—Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 8 Nov. 2025
In today’s housing market, even the lucky ones often face exhausting ordeals and need to stretch their budgets to land a home.
—Samantha Delouya, CNN Money, 21 Oct. 2025
Matt Slater, New York Times, 26 Apr. 2026
Others have also turned their personal ordeals into stories of inspiration.
—Brian Steinberg, Variety, 3 Apr. 2026
The medical ordeals are traumatic and disgusting, but fascinating and full of the quirks of modern life.
—Kelly Lawler, USA Today, 8 Jan. 2026
Both women survived, but are still reeling from ordeals that have drawn national attention — in part, because they were captured on video and shared on social media.
—CBS News, 3 Dec. 2025
On Instagram, and even on her reality show, Kardashian comes across as thrillingly impervious, wearing impassivity like body armor and putting her body and face through Olympian ordeals to draw our collective gaze.
—Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 8 Nov. 2025
In today’s housing market, even the lucky ones often face exhausting ordeals and need to stretch their budgets to land a home.
—Samantha Delouya, CNN Money, 21 Oct. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for ordeals
Noun
-
The video pans to an airstream on his Pacific Palisades property, which was destroyed by the devastating LA fires early last year.—
Janelle Ash,
FOXNews.com,
29 Apr. 2026
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Every edit, regeneration, and follow-up question a worker fires into a frontier model is training data, aggregated across hundreds of millions of users and tens of billions of conversations.—
Nick Lichtenberg,
Fortune,
29 Apr. 2026
Noun
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Post-punk bands face few gauntlets as arduous as the slow song, and Landowner challenge themselves to traverse three of them.—
Nina Corcoran,
Pitchfork,
24 Mar. 2026
-
Those odds proved to be correct, as One Battle and Sinners added the final jewels to their respective gauntlets en route to this Sunday’s Academy Awards.—
Joe Reid,
Vulture,
10 Mar. 2026
Noun
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Katherine Jackson was always seen as the person there supporting him through those trials.—
Angelique Jackson,
Variety,
28 Apr. 2026
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These advancements will prepare the three ports for green fuel trials in the next phase of their partnership.—
Jennifer Bringle,
Footwear News,
28 Apr. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Ordeals.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/ordeals. Accessed 3 May. 2026.
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