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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

trouble.

A distressing or dangerous situation.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈt͡ʃɹʌbəl/Canada, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/ˈtɹʌbəl/Canada, General-American, Received-Pronunciation[ˈt͡ʃɹɐbɫ̩]General-American[ˈt̠͡ɹ̠̊˔ɐbɫ̩]General-American
  1. A distressing or dangerous situation.

    countable · uncountable
    He was in trouble when the rain started.
  2. A difficulty, problem, condition, or action contributing to such a situation.

    countable · uncountable
    The trouble was a leaking brake line.
    The bridge column magnified the trouble with a slight tilt in the wrong direction.
  3. A person liable to place others or themselves in such a situation.

    countable · uncountable
  4. The state of being troubled, disturbed, or distressed mentally; unease, disquiet.

    countable · uncountable
  5. Objectionable feature of something or someone; problem, drawback, weakness, failing, or shortcoming.

    countable · uncountable
    Your trouble is that you quit too readily.
    The trouble with that suggestion is that we lack the funds to put it in motion.
  6. Violent or turbulent occurrence or event; unrest, disturbance.

    countable · uncountable
    the troubles in Northern Ireland
  7. Efforts taken or expended, typically beyond the normal required.

    countable · uncountable
    It’s no trouble for me to edit it.
  8. Difficulty in doing something.

    countable · uncountable
    She has trouble eating.
  9. Health problems, ailment, generally of some particular part of the body.

    countable · uncountable
    He’s been in hospital with some heart trouble.
  10. A malfunction.

    countable · uncountable
    My old car has engine trouble.
  11. Liability to punishment; conflict with authority.

    countable · uncountable
    He had some trouble with the law.
  12. A fault or interruption in a stratum.

    countable · uncountable
  13. Wife. Clipping of trouble and strife.

    Cockney · countable · slang · uncountable
  14. An unplanned, unwanted or undesired pregnancy.

    countable · dated · slang · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Verb is from Middle English troublen, trouble, borrowed from Old French troubler, trobler, trubler, metathetic variants of tourbler, torbler, turbler, from Vulgar Latin *turbulō, from Latin turbula (“disorderly group, a little crowd or people”), diminutive of turba (“stir; crowd”). The noun is from Middle English trouble, troble, from Old French troble, from the verb.

verb/ˈt͡ʃɹʌbəl/Canada, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/ˈtɹʌbəl/Canada, General-American, Received-Pronunciation[ˈt͡ʃɹɐbɫ̩]General-American[ˈt̠͡ɹ̠̊˔ɐbɫ̩]General-American
  1. To disturb, stir up, agitate (a medium, especially water).

    archaic · transitive
  2. To mentally distress; to cause (someone) to be anxious or perplexed.

    transitive
    What she said about narcissism is troubling me.
  3. In weaker sense: to bother or inconvenience.

    transitive
    I will not trouble you to deliver the letter.
  4. To physically afflict.

    transitive · usually
    My bad knee is troubling me.
  5. To take pains (to do something); to bother.

    intransitive · reflexive
    I won’t trouble to post the letter today; I can do it tomorrow.
  6. To worry; to be anxious.

    intransitive
Where this word comes from

Verb is from Middle English troublen, trouble, borrowed from Old French troubler, trobler, trubler, metathetic variants of tourbler, torbler, turbler, from Vulgar Latin *turbulō, from Latin turbula (“disorderly group, a little crowd or people”), diminutive of turba (“stir; crowd”). The noun is from Middle English trouble, troble, from Old French troble, from the verb.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.