Picture someone squeezed into a narrow place with no room to move — pressed on from outside, unable to get out on their own. Whatever the squeeze is made of (grief, poverty, pain, a storm at sea), the feeling is the same: this is more than I can bear, and I need help.
From the word’s history
From Old French destrecier, ultimately from Latin districtus / distringere "to draw apart, stretch tight, hold fast", from stringere "to draw tight, bind". The word literally carries the sense of being pulled tight or hemmed in — the same root that gives us strict and strain. (English strait, as in "in dire straits", carries the same narrow-place picture.)
字源直接把那個「被夾住」的畫面說出來了：distress 經古法文 destrecier 上溯到拉丁文 distringere（拉緊、扣住），字根 stringere 是「拉緊、綁緊」——strict、strain、stringent 都是同一家。所以 distress 從一開始講的就不是心情不好，而是被拉緊、被箍住的狀態，這也是為什麼它能同時用在心裡的痛、經濟的窘迫和船隻的遇險上。
Wiktionary, "distress" (< Old French destrecier < Latin distringere < stringere); Online Etymology Dictionary agrees
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原始詞典資料9 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
distressnoun/dɪˈstɹɛs/
- 1
Physical or emotional discomfort, suffering, or alarm, particularly of a more acute nature.
- To heighten his distress, he is approached by his wife, and bitterly upbraided for his perfidy in concealing from her his former connexions (with that unhappy girl who is here present with her child, the innocent offspring of her amours, fainting at the sight of his misfortunes, being unable to relieve him farther), and plunging her into those difficulties she never shall be able to surmount.
- At any other time Jessamy would have laughed at the expressions that chased each other over his freckled face: crossness left over from his struggle with the baby; incredulity; distress; and finally delight.
- 2
A cause of such discomfort.
- 3
Serious danger.
- I immediately considered that this must be some ship in distress, and that they had some comrade, or some other ship in company, and fired these gun for signals of distress, and to obtain help.
- At length they perceived a little cottage; two persons in the decline of life dwelt in this desert, who were always ready to give every assistance in their power to their fellow-creatures in distress.
- 4
human-sciencesmedicinepsychologyAn aversive state of stress to which a person cannot fully adapt.
- 5
lawA seizing of property without legal process to force payment of a debt.
- 6
lawThe thing taken by distraining; that which is seized to procure satisfaction.
- If he were not paid, he would straight go and take a distress of goods and cattle.
- The distress thus taken must be proportioned to the thing distrained for.
distressverb/dɪˈstɹɛs/
- 1
To cause strain or anxiety to someone.
- She respects me, no doubt, but has no longer any passionate feeling for me, and my death will distress her without plunging her in despair.
- 2
lawTo retain someone’s property against the payment of a debt; to distrain.
- This power of distress, as anciently used, became as oppressive as the feudal forfeiture. It was as hard for the tenant to be stripped in an instant of all his goods, for arrears of rent, as to be turned out of the possession of his farm.
- 3
To treat a new object to give it an appearance of age.
- a pair of distressed jeans
- She distressed the new media cabinet so that it fit with the other furniture in the room.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。