the adjective painfuland not painis the appropriate one to express that something causes or implies pain.
However, sometimes you can find in the press, especially in sports news, phrases like “The great undefeated of the season goes home with a painful defeat”, “Without a doubt, the most painful thing was the cheers” or ” The defeat, obviously, is painful ».
He Dictionary of the Spanish language indicates that painful es an adjective used in the sense of ‘causing or involving physical or moral pain’. It is is the established and majority term with this meaning, no pain. The origin of this confusion may be due to considering it coming from painless (‘that does not cause pain’), to which the negative prefix has been deleted in-. However, as indicated by the Grammarthis adjective has been formed from the scheme in-noun-osimilarly to colorless.
On the other hand, it should be noted that painfulin feminine, is a noun that collects the academic dictionary referring to a poetic composition that it possesses a moral teaching and that it was created by Ramón de Campoamor, as can be seen in “Dicha dolora reveals the conviction of the poet.”
Thus, in the early examples it would have been preferable to write “The season’s big loser goes home with a painful defeat,” “Without a doubt, the most painful thing was the cheering,” and “Defeat is obviously painful.”
See also
➤ hurt y sore
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