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Pressing vs Painful - What's the difference?

pressing | painful | Related terms |

Pressing is a related term of painful.


As adjectives the difference between pressing and painful

is that pressing is needing urgent attention while painful is causing pain or distress, either physical or mental.

As a noun pressing

is the application of pressure by a press or other means.

As a verb pressing

is .

pressing

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Needing urgent attention.
  • * 2013 , Luke Harding and Uki Goni, Argentina urges UK to hand back Falklands and 'end colonialism'' (in ''The Guardian , 3 January 2013)[http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/02/argentina-britain-hand-back-falklands]
  • Argentinians support the "Malvinas" cause, which is written into the constitution. But they are also worried about pressing economic problems such as inflation, rising crime and corruption.
  • * 1841 , , Barnaby Rudge , ch. 75,
  • “I come on business.—Private,” he added, with a glance at the man who stood looking on, “and very pressing business.”
  • Insistent, earnest, or persistent.
  • * 1891 , , The Picture of Dorian Gray , ch. 2,
  • You are very pressing , Basil, but I am afraid I must go.
  • * 1908 , , "The Duel,"
  • He was pressing and persuasive.

    Derived terms

    * pressingly * pressingness

    Quotations

    *

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The application of pressure by a press or other means.
  • A metal or plastic part made with a press.
  • The process of improving the appearance of clothing by improving creases and removing wrinkles with a press or an iron.
  • A memento preserved by pressing, folding, or drying between the leaves of a flat container, book, or folio. Usually done with a flower, ribbon, letter, or other soft, small keepsake.
  • The extraction of juice from fruit using a press.
  • A phonograph record; a number of records pressed at the same time.
  • Urgent insistence.
  • Verb

    (head)
  • painful

    Alternative forms

    * painfull (archaic)

    Adjective

    (en-adj)
  • Causing pain or distress, either physical or mental.
  • Afflicted or suffering with pain (of a body part or, formerly, of a person).
  • Requiring effort or labor; difficult, laborious.
  • * 1624 , John Smith, Generall Historie , in Kupperman 1988, p. 142:
  • The men bestow their times in fishing, hunting, warres, and such manlike exercises, scorning to be seene in any woman-like exercise, which is the cause that the women be very painefull , and the men often idle.
  • * 1843 , , Book 2, Ch. 2
  • For twenty generations, here was the earthly arena where painful living men worked out their life-wrestle

    Synonyms

    * (full of pain) doleful, sorrowful, irksome, annoying * (requiring labor or toil) laborious, exerting

    Antonyms

    * (causing pain) painless, painfree

    Derived terms

    * painfully * painfulness