[wur-ee, wuhr-ee] 
verb, -ried, -ry⋅ing, noun, plural -ries.| 1. | to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts; fret. |
| 2. | to move with effort: an old car worrying uphill. |
| 3. | to torment with cares, anxieties, etc.; trouble; plague. |
| 4. | to seize, esp. by the throat, with the teeth and shake or mangle, as one animal does another. |
| 5. | to harass by repeated biting, snapping, etc. |
| 6. | a worried condition or feeling; uneasiness or anxiety. |
| 7. | a cause of uneasiness or anxiety; trouble. |
| 8. | act of worrying. |
| 9. | Fox Hunting. the action of the hounds in tearing to pieces the carcass of a fox. |
| 10. | worry along or through, Informal. to progress or succeed by constant effort, despite difficulty: to worry through an intolerable situation. |
| wor·ry (wûr'ē, wŭr'ē) v. wor·ried (wûr'ēd, wŭr'-), wor·ry·ing, wor·ries (wûr'ēz, wŭr'-) v. intr.
[Middle English werien, worien, to strangle, from Old English wyrgan; see wer-2 in Indo-European roots.] wor'ri·er n. Word History: Worrying may shorten one's life, but not as quickly as it once did. The ancestor of our word, Old English wyrgan, meant "to strangle." Its Middle English descendant, worien, kept this sense and developed the new sense "to grasp by the throat with the teeth and lacerate" or "to kill or injure by biting and shaking." This is the way wolves or dogs might attack sheep, for example. In the 16th century worry began to be used in the sense "to harass, as by rough treatment or attack," or "to assault verbally," and in the 17th century the word took on the sense "to bother, distress, or persecute." It was a small step from this sense to the main modern senses "to cause to feel anxious or distressed" and "to feel troubled or uneasy," first recorded in the 19th century. |