Pain vs. Pang — What's the Difference?

Pain is a distressing feeling often caused by intense or damaging stimuli. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage." In medical diagnosis, pain is regarded as a symptom of an underlying condition.

A sudden sharp bodily pain

Highly unpleasant physical sensation caused by illness or injury

A sudden sharp feeling of emotional distress

Great care or trouble

To feel sharp bodily pains.

Cause mental or physical pain to

To feel pangs of distress.

An unpleasant feeling occurring as a result of injury or disease, usually localized in some part of the body

A paroxysm of extreme physical pain or anguish; a feeling of sudden and transitory agony; a throe.

Bodily suffering characterized by such feelings

A sudden sharp feeling of an emotional or mental nature, as of joy or sorrow.

Mental or emotional suffering; distress.

(transitive) To cause to have great pain or suffering; to torment, to torture.

An instance of this

A paroxysm of extreme pain or anguish; a sudden and transitory agony; a throe; as, the pangs of death.

Pains The pangs of childbirth.

To torture; to cause to have great pain or suffering; to torment.

Pains Great care or effort

A sudden sharp feeling;

(Informal) A source of annoyance; a nuisance

A mental pain or distress;

To cause physical pain to; hurt

A sharp spasm of pain

To cause mental or emotional distress to

An ache or bodily suffering, or an instance of this; an unpleasant sensation, resulting from a derangement of functions, disease, or injury by violence; hurt.

(uncountable) The condition or fact of suffering or anguish especially mental, as opposed to pleasure; torment; distress

An annoying person or thing.

Suffering inflicted as punishment or penalty.

Labour; effort; great care or trouble taken in doing something.

Any of various breads stuffed with a filling.

(transitive) To hurt; to put to bodily uneasiness or anguish; to afflict with uneasy sensations of any degree of intensity; to torment; to torture.

(transitive) To render uneasy in mind; to disquiet; to distress; to grieve.

To inflict suffering upon as a penalty; to punish.

To feel pain; to hurt.

Punishment suffered or denounced; suffering or evil inflicted as a punishment for crime, or connected with the commission of a crime; penalty.

Any uneasy sensation in animal bodies, from slight uneasiness to extreme distress or torture, proceeding from a derangement of functions, disease, or injury by violence; bodily distress; bodily suffering; an ache; a smart.

Specifically, the throes or travail of childbirth.

Uneasiness of mind; mental distress; disquietude; anxiety; grief; solicitude; anguish. Also called mental pain.

See Pains, labor, effort.

To inflict suffering upon as a penalty; to punish.

To put to bodily uneasiness or anguish; to afflict with uneasy sensations of any degree of intensity; to torment; to torture; as, his dinner or his wound pained him; his stomach pained him.

To render uneasy in mind; to disquiet; to distress; to grieve; as, a child's faults pain his parents.

A symptom of some physical hurt or disorder;

Emotional distress; a fundamental feeling that people try to avoid;

A somatic sensation of acute discomfort;

A bothersome annoying person;

Something or someone that causes trouble; a source of unhappiness;

Cause bodily suffering to

Cause emotional anguish or make miserable;