Agony is intense physical or emotional pain that feels almost unbearable. When someone is in agony, they're experiencing far more than ordinary discomfort or sadness. It's the kind of deep suffering that demands all your attention.

Physical agony might strike when you badly twist your ankle during a soccer game, sending waves of sharp, throbbing pain through your leg. Emotional agony hits when something truly devastating happens, like losing someone you love or watching a close friend move away unexpectedly. The word captures that awful feeling when pain, whether in your body or your heart, seems overwhelming.

You might also hear agony used more lightly in everyday speech. Someone might say they're in “agony” waiting to find out if they made the school play, or that it was “pure agony” sitting through a boring assembly. In these cases, people exaggerate to be dramatic or funny, but they're borrowing from the word's serious meaning.

The related word agonizing describes something that causes agony or takes painfully long. An agonizing decision is one that tears you up inside, where every option feels difficult. Time can feel agonizing too: those final minutes before the dismissal bell might seem to drag on forever.