painful – English adjective declension

Adjective: painful

Comparative	painfuller
Superlative	painfullest

Comparative	more painful
Superlative	most painful

In a 2008 case report from India, doctors described removing a giant tonsillolith that was making it painful for a young patient to swallow. [2009 September 1, Elizabeth Svoboda, “In Tonsils, a Problem the Size of a Pea”, in The New York Times:]
A rackingly painful disease that affects the joints and finally cripples, it is caused by an imbalance of uric acid in the system. [2014, Charles L. Mee, Jr, Lorenzo de Medici:]
The men bestow their times in fishing, hunting, warres, and such manlike exercises, scorning to be seene in any woman-like exercise, which is the cause that the women be very painefull, and the men often idle. [1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, Kupperman, published 1988, page 142:]
To all these painful labourers Johnson shewed a never-ceasing kindness, so far as they stood in need of it. [1791, James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson:]
For twenty generations, here was the earthly arena where painful living men worked out their life-wrestle [1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, chapter 2, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk):]
His violin playing is painful.

From Middle English paynful, peinful, peynful, paynefull, peynefull, equivalent to pain + -ful. Compare Danish pinefuld (“painful”).

English adjective forms of painful