If you describe an experience or situation as an ordeal, you think it is difficult and unpleasant. She described her agonising ordeal. a terrible or painful experience that continues for a period of time ordeal of. In customary law, a test of guilt or innocence in which the accused undergoes dangerous or painful tests believed to be under supernatural control. Ordeals by fire or water are the most common. Burns suffered while passing through fire (as in Hindu custom) or rejection (i.e., being buoyed up) by a body of water (as in witch trials) would be regarded as proof of guilt. In ordeal by combat, as in the medieval duel, the victor is said to win not by his own strength but because supernatural powers have intervened on the side of the right
Orbital Rate Display Earth And Lunar; displays the computed local vertical in the pitch axis during Earth or Lunar orbit
An ancient form of test to determine guilt or innocence, by appealing to a supernatural decision, once common in Europe, and still practiced in the East and by savage tribes
a primitive method of determining a person's guilt or innocence by subjecting the accused person to dangerous or painful tests believed to be under divine control; escape was usually taken as a sign of innocence