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Angst vs Distress - What's the difference?

angst | distress |

As nouns the difference between angst and distress

is that angst is emotional turmoil; painful sadness while distress is (Cause of) discomfort.

As verbs the difference between angst and distress

is that angst is to suffer angst; to fret while distress is to cause strain or anxiety to someone.

angst

English

Noun

(-)
  • Emotional turmoil; painful sadness.
  • * 1979 , Peter Hammill, Mirror images
  • I've begun to regret that we'd ever met / Between the dimensions. / It gets such a strain to pretend that the change / Is anything but cheap. / With your infant pique and your angst pretensions / Sometimes you act like such a creep.
  • * 2007 , Martyn Bone, Perspectives on Barry Hannah (page 3)
  • Harry's adolescence is theatrical and gaudy, and many of its key scenes have a lurid and camp quality that is appropriate to the exaggerated mood-shifting and self-dramatizing of teen angst .
  • A feeling of acute but vague anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression, especially philosophical anxiety.
  • Derived terms

    * angst bunny, angstbunny * angsty

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (informal) To suffer angst; to fret.
  • * 2001 , Joseph P Natoli, Postmodern Journeys: Film and Culture, 1996-1998
  • In the second scene, the camera switches to the father listening, angsting , dying inside, but saying nothing.
  • * 2006 , Liz Ireland, Three Bedrooms in Chelsea
  • She'd never angsted so much about her head as she had in the past twenty-four hours. Why the hell hadn't she just left it alone?

    References

    * (angst) * *

    Anagrams

    * * * * ----

    distress

    English

    Noun

    (-)
  • (Cause of) discomfort.
  • * {{quote-book
  • , year=1833 , author=John Trusler , title=The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings , chapter=8 citation , passage=To heighten his distress , he is approached by his wife, and bitterly upbraided for his perfidy in concealing from her his former connexions (with that unhappy girl who is here present with her child, the innocent offspring of her amours, fainting at the sight of his misfortunes, being unable to relieve him farther), and plunging her into those difficulties she never shall be able to surmount.}}
  • Serious danger.
  • * {{quote-book
  • , year=1719 , author=Daniel Defoe , title=Robinson Crusoe , chapter=13 citation , passage=I immediately considered that this must be some ship in distress , and that they had some comrade, or some other ship in company, and fired these gun for signals of distress, and to obtain help.}}
  • * {{quote-book
  • , year=1759 , author=Voltaire , title=Candide , chapter=42 citation , passage=At length they perceived a little cottage; two persons in the decline of life dwelt in this desert, who were always ready to give every assistance in their power to their fellow-creatures in distress .}}
  • (legal) A seizing of property without legal process to force payment of a debt.
  • (legal) The thing taken by distraining; that which is seized to procure satisfaction.
  • * Spenser
  • If he were not paid, he would straight go and take a distress of goods and cattle.
  • * Blackstone
  • The distress thus taken must be proportioned to the thing distrained for.

    Verb

    (es)
  • To cause strain or anxiety to someone.
  • * {{quote-book
  • , year=1827 , author=Stendhal , title=Armance , chapter=31 citation , passage=She respects me, no doubt, but has no longer any passionate feeling for me, and my death will distress her without plunging her in despair.}}
  • (legal) To retain someone’s property against the payment of a debt; to distrain.
  • *
  • To treat an object, such as an antique, to give it an appearance of age.
  • She distressed the new media cabinet so that it fit with the other furniture in the room.