The displeasure of being thwarted, blocked, or defeated in pursuit of a goal, or of facing an insoluble problem..
The displeasure of being thwarted, blocked, or defeated in pursuit of a goal, or of facing an insoluble problem.
Defined by its cause: a thwarted aim or unsolvable problem (failed plans, bureaucratic delays, a task that won't come together), which sets it apart from annoyance and irritation — those can arise from any minor bother with no blocked goal. Carries a note of helplessness and dissatisfaction those two lack, but is not fundamentally about being insulted (unlike pique, umbrage, or resentment). Intensity varies from momentary to, in psychology, a “deep chronic” condition; generally below outright anger.
1550s, “act of frustrating, disappointment, defeat,” from Latin frustrationem “a deception, disappointment,” from frustrari “to deceive, disappoint, make vain,” from frustra “in vain.”
The earliest sense was “nullification/defeat”; the now-dominant psychological sense (the inner state of being thwarted, including the “deep chronic” usage) rose to prominence over the 19th–20th centuries — a direction that is clear, though the precise modern dating is not pinned down in the sources consulted.