afflict

afflict (one) with (someone or something)

1. To cause one to contract an ailment or disease. A person's name or pronoun can appear before "with." My classroom has been almost empty all week because one kid afflicted the others with chicken pox. When you have a child in preschool, you'll be afflicted with every illness.
2. To cause another person hardship or difficulty. When used in this sense, a noun or pronoun typically does not appear between "afflict" and "with." Once I finally recovered from my illness, I was afflicted with medical bills.
3. To force someone to spend time with an irritating person. A person's name or pronoun typically appears before "with." Please don't afflict me with your obnoxious brother this evening.
See also: afflict
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

afflict someone with someone

to burden someone with an annoying person. I was foolish enough to afflict myself with my young cousin for the weekend.
See also: afflict

afflict someone with something

 
1. Lit. to cause someone to suffer from a disease or disability. The virus has afflicted everyone in the valley.
2. Fig. to burden someone with trouble. We were afflicted with all the worry that comes with raising a teenager.
See also: afflict
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • afflict (one) with (someone or something)
  • afflict with
  • assail with
  • badger into
  • not do (someone or oneself) any favors
  • third person
  • buy (yourself) time
  • buy time
  • spiff up
  • spiffed up
References in periodicals archive
They went from being the watchdog of the society to being the lapdogs of the powerful, from being comforters of the afflicted and afflicters of the comfortable to being comforters of the comfortable and afflicters of the afflicted.
Nigerian Media As Comforters Of The Comfortable, Afflicters Of The Afflicted
It afflicts females aged between 20 and 50 much more than male and also affects children and its underlying causes remain unknown.
Debilitating and painful diseases
And beyond all of these dilemmas of synthesis, both general and specific, there is, I think, an even larger difficulty that afflicts Mintz's analysis.
Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood
According to "Dementia Care in Assisted Living and Nursing Homes," a November 2003 study by Sheryl Zimmerman, co-director of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Program on Aging, Disability and Long Term Care, dementia afflicts up to 64 percent of the assisted living residents and half of the nursing home residents in the report's four-state, 45-facility survey area.
Murder in mind: increasing cases of dementia, changing populations contribute to rise in resident-to-resident violence in long term care facilities
It's been said that the purpose of government is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable
For the People
The journalistic imperative to "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" is not an auspicious formula for Republicans in such debates.
WHY AMERICANS HATE WELFARE
But I don't prescribe it for every resource ill that might afflict us.
Taking Out the Trash: A No-Nonsense Guide to Recycling
and to urge tighter scrutiny of Fort Detrick, but the job of the news media is supposed to be to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
'NY Times' Kristof Apologizes To Hatfill
Yet, even in the desolation of misery, loneliness, violence and hunger that indiscriminately afflict children, adults, and the elderly, God does not allow darkness to prevail.
Message of his holiness Benedict XVI for lent 2006
The purpose of preaching is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, maybe.
Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost (proper 23): October 9, 2005
I remember one old-timer in particular, a Tijuana bureau chief for a San Diego paper, rousing a workshop of young journalists of color with his passionate invocation of a familiar reporters' mantra: "to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted."
In the eye of the spin
Such attacks afflict about 14.6 million Americans and kill an estimated 5,000 each year, according to the American Lung Association.
Smelling Good But Feeling Bad
According to Friedman, countries refusing to adjust to globalization by embarking on the free market path are eventually afflicted by MIDS, i.e., Microchip Immune Deficiency Syndrome: "A disease that can afflict any bloated, overweight, sclerotic system in the post-Cold War era....
The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization
Throughout the book Nessan struggles with the relation between law and gospel, when to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Give Us This Day: A Lutheran Proposal for Ending World Hunger