distress

IPA: dɪstrˈɛs

Physical or emotional discomfort, suffering, or alarm, particularly of a more acute nature.
A cause of such discomfort.
Serious danger.
(medicine, psychology) An aversive state of stress to which a person cannot fully adapt.
(law) A seizing of property without legal process to force payment of a debt.
(law) The thing taken by distraining; that which is seized to procure satisfaction.

Examples of "distress" in Sentences

"To gie a hand in distress is guid i 'the sight of God."
Carl: Nations have been in distress from the days of Julius Caesar.
To complicate matters, the damsel in distress is also on the boat and needs protection.
And the action doesnâ€ ™ t stop there – For Paul, even saving the damsel in distress is COMPLEX!
If someone gets in distress from the heat they can ask that the flap be opened for them to leave but the round is then started over from the beginning.
My immediate inclination would be to investigate more closely the reason for their screaming --- after all they may have been in distress from a source that was not easily apparent.
But had he put the thing thus plainly, the fact itself would have been doubted; that _the sight of our friends in distress raises in us greater fear for ourselves than the sight of others in distress_.
Liesl Schillinger on His Illegal Self by Peter Carey: This idea, this truth — that a child in distress is hard-wired to seek protection from a woman, any woman, whatever her failings, her confusions, her ideology — is the heartbeat that races through Peter