View synonyms for birth pangs

birth pangs

plural noun

pains associated with the process of childbirth.
Informal. the hardships and difficulties accompanying a major innovation, change, or new venture.

First recorded in 1885–90

It is decreed of mothers that their birth pangs shall not cease until they die.

In anguish, fear, and humiliation had his love been born, but the birth-pangs had been as brief as they were intense.

They are striving earnestly and successfully to adjust conditions created in the birth pangs of a social revolution.

The birth-pangs of Democracy, wherewith convulsed Europe was groaning in cries that reached Heaven, could not escape me.

The curtains of the dark are already shaken by the birth-pangs of the morning.

April 19, 2024tortuous

[tawr-choo-uhs ]

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