harrowing

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈhæɹəʊiŋ/

harrowing

1. present participle of harrow

harrowing (comparative more harrowing, superlative most harrowing)

1. Causing pain or distress.
   • 2006, Paul Chadwick, Concrete: Killer Smile, Dark Horse Books, cover text

     Harrowing journeys down the dark roads of anger, violence, and madness

   • 2013 January 1, Brian Hayes, “Father of Fractals”, in American Scientist‎, volume 101, number 1, page 62:

     Toward the end of the war, Benoit was sent off on his own with forged papers; he wound up working as a horse groom at a chalet in the Loire valley. Mandelbrot describes this harrowing youth with great sangfroid.

harrowing (plural harrowings)

1. The process of breaking up earth with a harrow.

   The field received two harrowings.

2. Suffering, torment.
3. Christ's triumphal descent into Hell.
   • 2002, Michael W. Herren & ‎Shirley Ann Brown, Christ in Celtic Christianity: Britain and Ireland from the Fifth to the Tenth Century, →ISBN, page 157:

     The motif of the harrowing of hell was highly influential in the Insular world.

   • 2013, Robert E. Bjork, The Cynewulf Reader, →ISBN, page 153:

     But Juliana's uniquely powerful chaining of the devil is surely meant to recall Christ's harrowing of hell.

   • 1986, Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages, →ISBN, page 108:

     In the harrowing, Christ sweeps down upon death, hell, and the Devil, smashes down the doors of hell, and triumphantly carries the just off to heaven.