adversity

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Ill fortune

Nouns

1. (difficulty) adversity, affliction; bad, ill, adverse, or hard luck or fortune, Weltschmerz; evil lot; force majeur, frowns of fortune; evil star or genius; ups and downs of life, vicissitude; hard case or lines; peck or sea of troubles, hell upon earth, gall and wormwood; slough of despond; Pandora's box. Informal, downside. See evil, failure, pain, difficulty.

2. (hardship) trouble, hardship, bother, curse, poverty, tough sledding, a hard row to hoe; hot seat, thorn in one's side, bête noire; midlife crisis. Slang, crunch.

3. (bad luck) evil day; time out of joint; hard times, a dog's life; rainy day; gathering clouds, ill wind; visitation, infliction, distress; bitter pill; trial, ordeal. Slang, hard knocks, rough going, tough titty, raw deal, bad break.

4. (accident) mishap, mischance, misadventure, misfortune; disaster, calamity, fatality, catastrophe; accident, casualty, wreck, collision, crash; cross, reverse, check, contretemps, anomaly, rub; reversal, setback, comedown (See deterioration); losing game; friendly fire; ecocatastrophe, nuclear winter, oil spill. Slang, fender-bender, meltdown.

5. (victim of adversity) victim, unfortunate; downtrodden, dispossessed, homeless, etc. Informal, loser.

Verbs

1. go hard or ill with, weigh on; fall on evil days; go downhill; go to rack and ruin; go to the dogs, touch or hit bottom; fall from high estate; be badly off, have seen better days, have two strikes against one; come to grief. Slang, draw a blank; lose one's shirt; take one's lumps; have one's ass in a sling.

2. be unlucky, have bad luck. Slang, get the short end of the stick.

3. (cause adversity) curse, bring bad luck, cast an evil eye on. Informal, jinx, hex.

Adjectives

1. (being cursed) unfortunate, unhappy; in adverse circumstances, unprosperous, luckless, hapless, out of luck, down on one's luck; in trouble, in a bad way, in an evil plight, in Dutch; under a cloud; bleak, clouded; ill or badly off; poor, down in the world, down at heel, hard put [to it], down and out, undone, under the harrow, up against it or the wall; underprivileged. Slang, on the ropes, in a jam, out on a limb, up a tree, up shit creek [without a paddle], between the Devil and the deep blue sea, between Scylla and Charybdis, between a rock and a hard place, behind the eight ball.

2. unlucky, unblest, ill-fated, ill-starred, star-crossed, born under an evil star; out of luck, down on one's luck.

3. (causing distress) adverse, untoward; disastrous, calamitous, ruinous, dire, grievous.

Adverbs — adversely, unfavorably; disastrously, grievously; if worst comes to worst; from bad to worse; out of the frying pan into the fire.

Interjections — tough luck! Slang, tough shit! hard cheese!

Phrases — adversity makes strange bedfellows; when the going gets tough, the tough get going; misfortunes never come singly; a dose of adversity is often as needful as a dose of medicine.

Quotations — The whips and scorns of time (Shakespeare), Through thick and thin (Chaucer), Sweet are the uses of adversity (Shakespeare), By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean (Mark Twain), These are the times that try men's souls (Thomas Paine), Adversity is the first path to truth (Lord Byron), Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward (Bible).

Antonyms, See prosperity.

II

(Roget's IV) n.

Syn. misfortune, reverse, trouble; see affliction , difficulty 1 , 2 , misfortune 1 .

III

(Roget's 3 Superthesaurus) (VOCABULARY WORD) n.

[ad VUR sit ee]

hardship, unfavorable conditions.

He overcame great adversity to succeed in his profession.

SYN.: hardship, misfortune, trouble, ill-fortune, bad luck, calamity, difficulty, distress, suffering, setbacks, disaster, hard times.

ANT.: good fortune, ease

IV

(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun Bad fortune: haplessness, misfortune, unfortunateness, unluckiness, untowardness. See LUCK.