| / English Dictionary |
THROE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Severe spasm of pain
Example:
the throes of childbirth
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("throe" is a kind of...):
agony; excruciation; suffering (a state of acute pain)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Hard or painful trouble or struggle
Example:
a country in the throes of economic collapse
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("throe" is a kind of...):
distress (a state of adversity (danger or affliction or need))
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Present simple (first person singular and plural, second person singular and plural, third person plural) of the verb throe
Context examples:
He was swiftly mastered by the concept or sensation in him that struggled in birth-throes to receive expression and form, and then he forgot himself and where he was, and the old words—the tools of speech he knew—slipped out.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
He saw the ring of boys, howling like barbarians as he went down at last, writhing in the throes of nausea, the blood streaming from his nose and the tears from his bruised eyes.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
He had the "Love-sonnets from the Portuguese" in mind as he wrote, and he wrote under the best conditions for great work, at a climacteric of living, in the throes of his own sweet love-madness.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
He saw himself, stripped to the waist, with naked fists, fighting his great fight with Liverpool Red in the forecastle of the Susquehanna; and he saw the bloody deck of the John Rogers, that gray morning of attempted mutiny, the mate kicking in death- throes on the main-hatch, the revolver in the old man's hand spitting fire and smoke, the men with passion-wrenched faces, of brutes screaming vile blasphemies and falling about him—and then he returned to the central scene, calm and clean in the steadfast light, where Ruth sat and talked with him amid books and paintings; and he saw the grand piano upon which she would later play to him; and he heard the echoes of his own selected and correct words, But then, may I not be peculiarly constituted to write?
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
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