harrowing

verb

1. (form-of, gerund, participle, present)present participle and gerund of harrow.

adj

1. (formal)Causing pain or distress; harrying.

   “Harrowing journeys down the dark roads of anger, violence, and madness”

   “Toward the end of the war, Benoit was sent off on his own with forged papers; he wound up working as a horse groom at a chalet in the Loire valley. Mandelbrot describes this harrowing youth with great sangfroid.”

noun

1. The process of breaking up earth with a harrow.

   “The field received two harrowings.”

2. Suffering, torment.
3. Ravaging; hostile incursion; spoliation; intentional widespread destruction.

   “Scientists who complain about the helplessness of politicians might consider the desolation in England which followed the harrowing of the north by William the Conqueror or the state of the Palatinate long after the end of the Thirty Years War[.]”

4. Ravaging; hostile incursion; spoliation; intentional widespread destruction.

   “As in other myths, like Christ's harrowing of hell, the initiate descends into the netherworld for the magical three days.”

   “In the harrowing, Christ sweeps down upon death, hell, and the Devil, smashes down the doors of hell, and triumphantly carries the just off to heaven.”

   “The motif of the harrowing of hell was highly influential in the Insular world.”

   “But Juliana's uniquely powerful chaining of the devil is surely meant to recall Christ's harrowing of hell.”