Predicaments

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A collection of challenging situations that can create significant hardship or confusion
2. A grouping of troublesome scenarios where individuals face considerable difficulties or awkward choices
3. Circumstances involving trouble or hardship that are hard to resolve

Etymology: "Predicaments" is the plural of "predicament," and the singular carries a surprising old meaning. In medieval logic, a "praedicamentum" was one of the categories into which Aristotle sorted everything that can be said about a thing: its substance, quantity, quality, relation and so on. The Latin word came from "praedicare," to declare or assert, so a predicament was literally something that could be predicated of a subject. Over the centuries the term drifted from that technical sense toward a more general idea of a condition or state a person finds themselves in. The step from "category of being" to "state of affairs" is one that the word made gradually, through Middle English and Old French, before its modern sense of an awkward, difficult situation took hold. Today the plural most often describes the trying circumstances people get themselves, or are placed, into.

Synonyms: dilemmas, plights, quandaries, troubles, difficulties

Antonyms: solutions, resolutions, answers, exits, escapes