Magoosh GRE Vocabulary Practice Test

This item tests a word for a difficult or distressing experience and how that experience is perceived in terms of severity and duration. Tribulation fits best because it conveys serious trouble or suffering over a period, a weighty burden that often feels ongoing. A trial suggests a test or proving moment rather than the experience itself; an ordeal is a severe and trying experience, usually intense but can be finite; suffering describes pain or distress rather than the event or situation as such. So tribulation captures the sense of a heavy, enduring hardship implied by the prompt.