predicament
/prɪˈdɪkəm(ə)nt
/noun
1A difficult, unpleasant, or embarrassing situation: the club’s financial predicament...
- However, I give credit to them for choosing to turn what could have been cliched confrontation scenes into smarter, more unusually human and complex situations - sitcom predicaments made realistic.
- The word crisis is too often used to exaggerate the predicament of a club experiencing hard times.
- His predicament allows him to spot unlikely but truthful parallels between comic books and real life.
Synonyms
difficult situation, awkward situation, mess, difficulty, problematic situation, issue, plight, quandary, trouble, muddle, mare's nest, crisis
informal hole, fix, jam, sticky situation, pickle, scrape, bind, tight spot/corner, spot, corner, dilemma, hot/deep water, kettle of fish, how-do-you-do
2(In Aristotelian logic) each of the ten ‘categories’, often listed as: substance or being, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, posture, having or possession, action, and passion.
Origin
Late Middle English (in sense 2): from late Latin praedicamentum 'something predicated' (rendering Greek katēgoria 'category'), from Latin praedicare (see predicate). From the sense 'category' arose the sense 'state of being, condition'; hence 'unpleasant situation'.