frustrating
/ˈfɹʌsˌtɹeɪ̯tɪŋ/adjective, verb
frustrating is an adjective meaning “Discouraging; causing annoyance or anger by excessive difficulty” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-I-N-G and has 3 syllables, and it appears 9.3 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does frustrating mean?
adjective
- 1
Discouraging; causing annoyance or anger by excessive difficulty.
verb
- 1
present participle and gerund of frustrate
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce frustrating?
- UK /fɹəˈstɹeɪ̯tɪŋ/
- UK /ˌfɹʌsˈtɹeɪ̯tɪŋ/
- US /ˈfɹʌsˌtɹeɪ̯tɪŋ/
Frustrating has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-AnotherFriendlyHuman-frustrating.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of frustrating
- more frustrating comparative
- most frustrating superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is frustrating?
Frustrating appears 9.3 times per million words in written English, the 7,445th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Frustrating in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense discouraging; causing annoyance or anger by excessive difficulty:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | frustrant |
| German | frustrierend |
| Portuguese | frustrante |
| Spanish | frustrante |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does frustrating come from?
From frustrate + -ing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).