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View synonyms for growing pains

growing pains

plural noun

  1. dull, quasi-rheumatic pains of varying degree in the limbs during childhood and adolescence, often popularly associated with the process of growing.
  2. emotional difficulties experienced during adolescence and preadulthood.
  3. difficulties attending any new project or any rapid development of an existing project:

    a city plagued with growing pains.



growing pains

plural noun

  1. pains in muscles or joints sometimes experienced by children during a period of unusually rapid growth
  2. difficulties besetting a new enterprise in its early stages


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Word History and Origins

Origin of growing pains1

First recorded in 1800–10

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Idioms and Phrases

Problems that arise in beginning or enlarging an enterprise, as in The company is undergoing growing pains but should be viable by next year . This expression, which dates from the late 1800s, originally referred to the joint and limb aches experienced by youngsters who are growing rapidly. By about 1900 it was being used figuratively.

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Example Sentences

I think the news industry is going through digital growing pains and will come out the other side stronger and better.

That said, movement leaders are braced for further growing pains.

But I have a hunch that Sullivan will survive the growing pains and emerge as one of the leading blues stars of his generation.

Maybe her "hollywood makeover" is having some growing pains.

The response included denouncements from his Growing Pains costars Tracey Gold and Alan Thicke.

The ways of teachers like rainy days and growing pains belong to the inexplicable and inevitable.

His mind suffered growing-pains, as young minds of any intellectual and poetic worth needs must.

In the long years of its growth and success the Senate Hotel had known the usual growing pains.

Another boat comes in to be lengthened: it has growing-pains, and wants assistance.

It must be easier to talk to such a one about Matilda's stomach, and the growing pains in Fanny's legs, than to a young bachelor.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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