Definition of "anguish"

So, ye miserable people; you must go to God in anguishes, and make your prayer to him.

1549, Hugh Latimer, "The Third Sermon Preached before King Edward VI

Is there no play,To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?

c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene i]

Love of your selfe, she saide, and deare constraint,Lets me not sleepe, but wast the wearie nightIn secret anguish and unpittied plaint,Whiles you in carelesse sleepe are drowned quight.

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto LIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie

But they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Exodus 6:9

There, loathing Life, and yet of Death afraid,In Anguish of her Spirit, thus she pray'd.

1700, [John] Dryden, “Cinyras and Myrrha, out of the Tenth Book of Ovid’s Metamorphosis”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […]

May I the sacred pleasures knowOf strictest amity, nor ever wantA friend with whom I mutually may shareGladness and anguish […]

1708, [John Philips], “Book I”, in Cyder. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […]

She took his trembling hand, and kissed it, and put it round her neck: she called him her John—her dear John—her old man—her kind old man; she poured out a hundred words of incoherent love and tenderness; her faithful voice and simple caresses wrought this sad heart up to an inexpressible delight and anguish, and cheered and solaced his over-burdened soul.

1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 18, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848

A terrible scream—a prolonged yell of horror and anguish—burst out of the silence of the moor. That frightful cry turned the blood to ice in my veins.

1889, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish,Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribablelook,)Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide,I dream, I dream, I dream.

1892, Walt Whitman, “Old War-Dreams”, in The Leaves of Grass

We’re leaving these shores for our time has come, the days of our youth must now end. The hearts bitter anguish, it burns for the home that we’ll never see again.

c. 1900s, Kl. Knigge, Iceland Folk Song, traditional, Harmony: H. Ruland