as in bitterly
with feelings of bitterness or grief
painfully she recounted the difficult relationship she had with her mother
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Recent Examples of painfully
Inspired by a 2017 Los Angeles Time article about a San Gabriel Valley tragedy, director Eric Lin’s heartbreaking feature painfully reminds us of the need to get help and how mental health issues within Asian cultures need to be destigmatized.
—
Randy Myers, Mercury News, 8 Jan. 2026
By Sunday, he was gone, a mercifully swift ending to painfully slow decline.
—Scott Maxwell, The Orlando Sentinel, 8 Jan. 2026
But to many survivors, recovery still feels painfully slow.
—Melissa Gomez, Los Angeles Times, 7 Jan. 2026
O'Keeffe's Lip Repair Night Treatment If your lips are painfully cracked or chapped, this nighttime treatment means business.
—Jeaneen Russell, PEOPLE, 5 Jan. 2026
The taut scenes provide the actors with a playing field to shine individually in heated arguments, sobering moments of empathy and painfully honest talks about what comes after a life-altering event.
—Carlos Aguilar, Variety, 30 Dec. 2025
That reality became painfully clear during an atmospheric river storm in March 2023 when a levee along California’s Pajaro River failed, flooding the town of Pajaro.
—Farshid Vahedifard, The Conversation, 29 Dec. 2025
Instead, his foot swung upward and struck him painfully, sending him collapsing to the floor as colleagues nearby burst into laughter.
—Jijo Malayil, Interesting Engineering, 29 Dec. 2025
But this perception has created existential threats for Iranians—something the June attacks made painfully evident.
—Mohammad Javad Zarif, Foreign Affairs, 22 Dec. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for painfully
Adverb
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Its inhabitants were left without light or heat during a bitterly cold polar vortex, with temperatures as low as 2 degrees Fahrenheit.—
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Hasina was bitterly criticized by both her opponents and independent critics for sending Zia to jail.—
Adverb
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This should be, but sadly will probably not be, the line that shouldn’t have been crossed.—
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Discovering the chemicals responsible for smoke taint is, sadly, only half the battle.—
Adverb
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Tarun would tease her, and my mother would look sorrowfully toward Kavitha, as if the two of them now shared some womanly burden.—
Adverb
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Alexandria has been really hard hit, down 50% in that period.—
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For instance, walking most days is far better than exercising hard once a month.—
Adverb
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For their part, Democratic leaders spoke mournfully of limits, of energy shortages, of national decline, of a crisis of confidence itself.—
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Based on the Dylan Thomas prose poem of the same name, published in 1952, the film lovingly and mournfully depicts the boyhood Christmastime of an old Welshman, tenderly and a tad mischievously embodied by Elliott.—
Cite this Entry
“Painfully.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/painfully. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
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