The AI-powered English dictionary
comparative more afflictive, superlative most afflictive
That causes physical or mental pain. quotations examples
But the euil of the paine or the punishment of sin, or any kynde of afflictiue aduersitie, is not (in it self) absolutely euil, or simply to be fled from or auoyded.
1576, George Gascoigne, The Droomme of Doomes Day, London: Gabriel Cawood, Part 2, Art. 15
All this from Jove’s afflictive Hand we bear:Who, far from Argos, wills our Ruin here.
1718, Alexander Pope, transl., The Iliad of Homer, London: Bernard Lintot, Volume 4, Book 14, p. 96
In my childhood I could not imagine a more afflictive punishment than for my mother to refuse to kiss me at night: the very idea was terrible;
1847, Anne Brontë (as Acton Bell), Agnes Grey, London: Thomas Cautley Newby, Volume 3, Chapter 3, p. 54
The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
1935, Marianne Moore, “Snakes, Mongooses, Snake Charmers, and the Like”, in Collected Poems, New York: Macmillan, published 1951, page 65
[…] in the days and weeks that passed, in absentia—or perhaps from a distance—he’d gradually filled my life, our lives, with his afflictive presence.
2015, Chigozie Obioma, chapter 8, in The Fishermen, Boston: Little, Brown