Definition of "tribulation" []

• Great affliction, trial, or distress; suffering: Their tribulation has finally passed. See Synonyms at trial. (noun)
• An experience that tests one's endurance, patience, or faith. See Synonyms at burden1. (noun)

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.

• "William Chambers wrote in his Edinburgh Journal in 1840: "It seems mankind are forever destined to live under some alarming apprehension ... at every interval of three, four, or five years, the community is plunged into the greatest tribulation from the number of bankruptcies and general mercantile stagnation, while ruin stares everyone in the face.""
• "And those who keep their treaty when they make one, and the patient in tribulation and adversity and time of stress."
• "The word tribulation means calamity, or suffering."