struggle

CEFRB1

/ˈstɹʌɡəl/

verb · noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    verb

    To try hard to deal with a difficult situation.

  2. 02

    noun

    A difficult effort or fight.

Examples

  • Even today, however, women struggle against discrimination.

  • That fight seemed like a life-or-death struggle.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
5

Deep Dive

verb

Extra meanings

  1. Strife, contention, great effort.

  2. To strive, to labour in difficulty, to fight (for or against), to contend.

noun

Extra meaning

  1. A contortion of the body in an attempt to escape or to perform a difficult task.

More examples

In context

  • Marx wrote about the class struggle.

  • During the centuries, the people of Ireland struggled constantly to assert their right to govern themselves.

  • One of the doctor’s patients struggled with depression.

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

Despite being exhausted, the hiker had to blank up the steep mountain trail.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

verb

From Middle English struglen, stroglen, strogelen, of obscure origin. Cognate with Scots strugil (“to struggle, grapple, contend”). Perhaps from a variant of *strokelen, *stroukelen (> English stroll), from Middle Dutch struyckelen ("to stumble, trip, falter"; > Modern Dutch struikelen), the frequentative form of Old Dutch *strūkon (“to stumble”), from Proto-Germanic *strūkōną, *strūkēną (“to be stiff”), from Proto-Indo-European *strug-, *ster- (“to be stiff; to bristle, strut, stumble, fall”), related to Middle Low German strûkelen ("to stumble"; > Low German strükeln), Old High German strūhhēn, strūhhōn ("to stumble, trip, tumble, go astray"; > German strauchen, straucheln). Alternative e...