Synonyms:
arduous, backbreaking, grueling, gruelling, hard, heavy, laborious, operose, punishing, toilsome
Meaning: characterized by effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort; "worked their arduous way up the mining valley"; "a grueling campaign"; "hard labor"; "heavy work"; "heavy going"; "spent many laborious hours on the project"; "set a punishing pace"
Synonyms:
punishing
Meaning: resulting in punishment; "the king imposed a punishing tax"
Usage examples
I'm punishing him for his disobedience.
"I don't know much about punishing," said the tailor.
By way of punishing me for this imprudence, she concocted with Talbot a plot.
I'm not punishing him because he spoiled your pies . . . that was an accident.
This particular kind of owl, as he knew, was a most formidable antagonist; but with his substantial weight and his long, punishing jaws, he felt himself much more than a match for her.
But I cannot consent to argue the point as if society had no means of bringing its weaker members up to its ordinary standard of rational conduct, except waiting till they do something irrational, and then punishing them, legally or morally, for it.
After the war Mr. Greeley, while advocating "impartial suffrage" for black as well as white, advocated also "universal amnesty." He believed nothing was to be gained by punishing a defeated portion of our nation, and wanted the past buried as quickly as possible.
At first they were for punishing Daedalus with the death which he so richly deserved, but when they remembered what he had done to make their homes pleasanter and their lives easier, they allowed him to live; and yet they drove him out of Athens and bade him never return.
Hercules destroying the monsters and punishing brigands for the safety of Greece, Orpheus teaching the rough and wild Pelasgians,--neither of them putting a price upon their services,--there we see the noblest creations of poetry, the loftiest expression of justice and virtue.
So it was time after time (for the old woman was used to having her own way) until Mrs. Cork would, I think, have tried punishing her if she had not been afraid of Mrs. Tebrick's rows of white teeth, which she often showed her, then laughing afterwards, as if to say it was only play.