as in horrible
causing great and lasting pain or distress
The family struggled to cope with the traumatic experience of losing their home.
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.
Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of traumatic
The six-episode series, co-produced by Ram and Amita Madhvani, was born partly from a traumatic encounter that has haunted the filmmaker for decades.
—
Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 6 Mar. 2025
Now, after a long and sometimes traumatic journey, Michael and Tanya are married, touring, winning all sorts of awards, and set to release their fifth album together, and their fourth as The War and Treaty.
—Sid Evans, Southern Living, 4 Mar. 2025
As expected, the diagnosis was traumatic for both Wade who was in his early forties at the time.
—Elizabeth Ayoola, Essence, 28 Feb. 2025
Shari has been particularly vocal, describing her childhood as traumatic and calling for child protection laws for online influencers.
—Dan Perry, Newsweek, 28 Feb. 2025
See All Example Sentences for traumatic
Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 6 Mar. 2025
Now, after a long and sometimes traumatic journey, Michael and Tanya are married, touring, winning all sorts of awards, and set to release their fifth album together, and their fourth as The War and Treaty.
—Sid Evans, Southern Living, 4 Mar. 2025
As expected, the diagnosis was traumatic for both Wade who was in his early forties at the time.
—Elizabeth Ayoola, Essence, 28 Feb. 2025
Shari has been particularly vocal, describing her childhood as traumatic and calling for child protection laws for online influencers.
—Dan Perry, Newsweek, 28 Feb. 2025
See All Example Sentences for traumatic
Recent Examples of Synonyms for traumatic
Adjective
-
This is really happening and these horrible things are happening and that this person doesn't want to be happening.—
Patrick Gomez,
EW.com,
14 Mar. 2025
-
The tech giant had a horrible week, off nearly 11% in the period despite Friday’s relief bounce.—
Pia Singh,
CNBC,
14 Mar. 2025
Adjective
-
While that decline was painful for COST holders, the stock bottomed in mid-May, five months before the S & P 500 ultimately found its own low in October 2022.—
Frank Cappelleri,
CNBC,
12 Mar. 2025
-
For Senate Democrats, the GOP plan is painful to swallow.—
Philip Elliott,
TIME,
12 Mar. 2025
Adjective
-
The New York Yankees received terrible news on Monday regarding Gerrit Cole's injury.—
Faisal Kutty,
Newsweek,
11 Mar. 2025
-
Other adults in the room opt to avert their eyes as Jamie disrobes, but Eddie can’t turn away, out of a mix of protectiveness and horrified shock, in the same way that there’s no editor to protect the characters, the actors, or the audience from having to live in each terrible moment of the scene.—
Alan Sepinwall,
Rolling Stone,
11 Mar. 2025
Adjective
-
In fact, there are lots of folks who benefit enormously from the use of headphones in public and even require them, namely those with sensory processing disorders or symptoms of PTSD, who might find public spaces (and the amount of audio stimuli that accompanies them) to be totally overwhelming.—
Mary Catherine McAnnally Scott,
Southern Living,
16 Mar. 2025
-
This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
16 Mar. 2025
Adjective
-
As Jeffrey’s amateur investigation spirals deeper into danger, he’s forced to confront the unsettling coexistence of idyllic suburban life and brutal violence lurking beneath the surface.—
Travis Bean,
Forbes,
8 Mar. 2025
-
Each weekly episode drop since Valentine’s Day has served up an unsettling number of recognizable love songs (and, soon, the first-ever live musical performance for its March 9 reunion ep).—
Clover Hope,
Pitchfork,
7 Mar. 2025
Adjective
-
The Fairfield County corridor is infamously awful, according to Potamkin Hyundai, with the Stamford stretch recently ranking as the number one busiest highway segment in the entire country.—
Staff report,
Hartford Courant,
10 Mar. 2025
-
But Ovechkin has been scoring 50 goals (a season) for an awful long time now.—
Homero De la Fuente,
CNN,
9 Mar. 2025
Adjective
-
If you’ve been hurt before—through rejection, betrayal or emotional invalidation—exposing your emotions again can seem unbearable.—
Mark Travers,
Forbes,
1 Mar. 2025
-
Merit’s day-to-day and intertwining troubles provide a comforting indie-film blanket for the audience, reminiscent of any coming-of-age story where the hero endures minor mishaps while escaping the unbearable.—
Proma Khosla,
IndieWire,
27 Feb. 2025
Adjective
-
While no human-affecting viruses have been revived yet, the fact that ancient microbes can persist in a viable state raises a disturbing possibility: what else is hidden in the deep freeze, waiting to wake up?—
Scott Travers,
Forbes,
16 Mar. 2025
-
The possibility of losing Miami Beach's only art house cinema is disturbing to Tabsch, a filmmaker whose 2018 documentary The Last Resort, was about Miami Beach's Jewish community in the 1970s.—
Mandalit del Barco,
NPR,
15 Mar. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Traumatic.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/traumatic. Accessed 20 Mar. 2025.
Copy CitationLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share