predicament

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

Predicament is useful for a difficult position that someone needs to escape from. Dilemma is different because it stresses a hard choice between two or more options. Plight sounds more serious and sad, and it is often used for groups that make people feel sympathy. Mess is informal and broad, so it can describe confusion or problems without the slightly formal tone of predicament. Bind is quite close, but it is more conversational and often appears in phrases like in a bind. Say 'Lena was in a predicament after losing her passport abroad.' Say 'Lena faced a dilemma' when the real problem is choosing between two actions.

Common collocations

Etymology

Predicament came into English from Latin writing about logic and classification. The older Latin verb behind it, praedicare, meant 'to state' or 'to declare'. Early uses in English could mean a class or category in formal logic. Later, the everyday meaning shifted, and the word came to mean a difficult situation that someone is stuck in.