worry
C2
a situation in which you are suffering or are in great danger and therefore in urgent need of help: 受苦;遇难;遇险
in distress Six people were rescued by helicopter from a fishing boat in distress off the coast.直升机从海岸附近的一艘遇险渔船上救出了6个人。
distress signal The term "mayday" is used as a distress signal by people who need help on a ship or an aircraft.
He seems to be quite unaware of other people's distress.
It was terrible for her to see her child in such distress.
Terry is always willing to help out a lady in distress!
The animal was clearly in distress, so we called the vet immediately.
The old lady's distress at the news could have brought on a heart attack.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Sadness and regret
aw
be/weigh on your conscienceidiom
bitter
black dog
breastbeating
cry
feel badidiom
gloominess
glumness
groan
guilt
guilt complex
melancholia
prick someone's conscienceidiom
regretful
regretfully
remorse
remorseful
repentant
wretchedness
distress
verb[ T ]
uk /dɪˈstres/ us /dɪˈstres/
to make someone feel very upset or worried: 使烦乱，使焦虑，使忧虑
I hope I haven't distressed you with all these personal questions.我希望我问的这些私人问题没有让你心烦。

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Making people sad, shocked and upset
aback
amiss
appal
be laughing on the other side of your faceidiom
bite
bum
haunt
heartbreaker
heartbreakingly
hit/touch a (raw) nerveidiom
horrify
nerve
self-laceration
sensitivity
shake someone out of something
shake someone up
shake/rock something to its foundationsidiom
shattering
tear
toxic

distress | American Dictionary

distress
noun[ U ]
us/dɪˈstres/
great mental or physical suffering, such as extreme anxiety, sadness, or pain, or the state of being in danger or urgent need:
emotional/financial distress
Four men were rescued from a fishing boat in distress off the coast.

distress

verb[ T ]us/dɪˈstres/
Rice appeared distressed about the argument and could not talk about it.

distressing

adjectiveus/dɪˈstres·ɪŋ/
[ + that clause ]It is distressing that so little progress has been made after all this time.

distress | Business English

distress
noun
uk /dɪˈstres/us
[ C or U ] LAW
the legal action of taking and selling another person’s property in order to get money for a payment or debt that they owe:
make a distressA distress should be made for the whole rent in arrears; but if goods cannot be found at the time, the injured party may make a second distress.
[ U ] ECONOMICS, FINANCE
financial failure, for example, not having enough money to pay back a debt or the costs of operating a business:
Rising dependence on credit cards could be a sign of distress as some consumers borrow just to meet routine expenses.
economic/financial distress

Examples of distress

distress
Anxious/resistant attachment is characterized by difficulty settling with the caregiver when distressed, often tinged with anger.
The daily coherence rating reflected the consistency of a child's attachment behaviors each day across the three distressing situations in the diary.
The story remains as distressing for the nineteenth-century households.
We can all cite distressing examples of the failures of systems and of workers to respond in a timely and appropriate way.
According to a perception-action theory of empathy, the subject is distressed because the state of the object is imparted to him directly.
Do they find it distressing when art museums fail to hang pictures of brains on their walls?
The offence is not designed to penalise the expressions of opinion that happen to be disagreeable, distasteful, or even offensive, annoying or distressing.
The general practitioner is a first port of call for people with all manner of distressing circumstances.
Because such potentially distressing events are predictable, but unavoidable, they are an ideal focus for an investigation of coping behaviours.
The considerable costs of her earlier treatment had been futile, distressing, and wasteful.
Fears about travel were not only distressing but were also the main factor limiting the children's social activities and relationships with friends.
The presence of auditory hallucinations in non-help-seeking community samples emphasizes that the experience of voices per se may not or may not be distressing.
I knew how to respond to the statements distressed patients frequently say when confronted with difficult circumstances.
Even so, over one third of patients were depressed and one out of four carers was distressed.
Participants (patients and controls) were not distressed when listening to the distorted or alien feedback, but usually described it as an unusual experience.
See all examples of distress
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations withdistress

distress

These are words often used in combination with distress.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

acute distress
He felt that acutedistress or anxiety in the other patients precluded effective communication.
considerable distress
This clearly causes considerabledistress to the family, who obviously feel a deep sense of pain at her expression of grief.
cry of distress
Why is it that last winter and last summer the cryofdistress was so great that charitable people were asked to help?
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