ppl. a. [f. prec. + -ING2.] That excruciates or causes extreme pain or anguish, whether bodily or mental; tormenting, torturing, agonizing. Const. to.
1664. H. More, Myst. Iniq., xx. 75. The excruciating fear of a worse then Pagan Purgatory.
1770. Goldsm., Life Bolingbroke, Wks. (Globe), 467/2. A cancer in his cheek, by which excruciating disease he died.
1791. Boswell, Johnson, an. 1756 (1831), I. 299. That most difficult and excruciating question, the Origin of Evil.
1833. I. Taylor, Fanat., vi. 179. Excruciating deaths; especially empalement or crucifixion.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. xxiii. 161. The biting of the hydrocarbons was excruciating to the eyes.
b. hyperbolically, in humorous use.
1819. Campbell, Spec. Brit. Poets, III. 2. He [Drayton] is a less excruciating hunter of conceits [than Cowley].
1824. W. Irving, T. Trav., I. 348. Blunders in sense and sound, that were excruciating to an author’s ears.
1865. Miss Braddon, Only a Clod, i. 6. If there’s one thing in the world that’s more excruciating than another, it’s that fellow’s cheerfulness.
1876. C. M. Davies, Unorth. Lond. (ed. 2), 26. An excruciating chorus having been performed in the feeblest manner.
