anguished, tormented, tortured
(adjective) experiencing intense pain especially mental pain; “an anguished conscience”; “a small tormented schoolboy”; “a tortured witness to another’s humiliation”
Source: WordNet® 3.1
tortured
simple past tense and past participle of torture
tortured (comparative more tortured, superlative most tortured)
Having been subjected to torture, mental or physical.
Involving suffering and difficulty.
Of literature, burdened by unnecessary complexity, obfuscation, abstruseness, etc.
tortured prose
Source: Wiktionary
Tor"ture, n. Etym: [F.,fr.L. tortura, fr. torquere, tortum, to twist, rack, torture; probably akin to Gr. tre`pein to turn, G. drechsein to turn on a lathe, and perhaps to E. queer. Cf. Contort, Distort, Extort, Retort, Tart, n., Torch, Torment, Tortion, Tort, Trope.]
1. Extreme pain; anguish of body or mind; pang; agony; torment; as, torture of mind. Shak. Ghastly spasm or racking torture. Milton.
2. Especially, severe pain inflicted judicially, either as punishment for a crime, or for the purpose of extorting a confession from an accused person, as by water or fire, by the boot or thumbkin, or by the rack or wheel.
3. The act or process of torturing. Torture, whitch had always been deciared illegal, and which had recently been declared illegal even by the servile judges of that age, was inflicted for the last time in England in the month of May, 1640. Macaulay.
Tor"ture, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Tortured (; p. pr. & vb. n. Torturing.] Etym: [Cf. F. Torturer. ]
1. To put to torture; to pain extremely; to harass; to vex.
2. To punish with torture; to put to the rack; as, to torture an accused person. Shak.
3. To wrest from the proper meaning; to distort. Jar. Taylor.
4. To keep on the stretch, as a bow. [Obs.] The bow tortureth the string. Bacon.
Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition
2 April 2025
(adjective) secret or hidden; not openly practiced or engaged in or shown or avowed; “covert actions by the CIA”; “covert funding for the rebels”
The first coffee-house in Mecca dates back to the 1510s. The beverage was in Turkey by the 1530s. It appeared in Europe circa 1515-1519 and was introduced to England by 1650. By 1675 the country had more than 3,000 coffee houses, and coffee had replaced beer as a breakfast drink.
