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Definition of "struggle" []

  • To exert muscular energy, as against a material force or mass: struggled with the heavy load. (verb-intransitive)
  • To be strenuously engaged with a problem, task, or undertaking: struggled with his math homework. (verb-intransitive)
  • To make a strenuous effort; strive: struggled to be polite. (verb-intransitive)
  • To contend or compete: "Right and wrong ... will ever continue to struggle” ( Abraham Lincoln). (verb-intransitive)
  • To progress with difficulty: struggled through the novel. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "struggle" in a sentence
  • "The great principle at the bottom of everything in Nature is that the fittest survives: or, as I think it is better to say it, in any particular conflict or struggle that thing survives which is the fittest to survive _in this particular struggle_."
  • "But while this security will become complete under the régime of socialism, which will assure to every man who works the material means of life, this will not exclude the intellectual forms of the struggle for existence which M. Tchisch recently said should be interpreted not only in the sense of a _struggle for life_, but also in the sense of a _struggle for the enrichment of life_. ["
  • "His main struggle is going to be Hillary trying to sabotage his campaign."