The Word "Tribulation"

It is derived from the Latin tribulum— which was the threshing instrument or roller whereby the Roman husbandman separated the corn from the husks; and tribulatio, in its primary significance, was the act of this separation. But some Latin writer of the Christian Church appropriated the word and image for the setting forth of a higher truth; and sorrow, distress, and adversity, being the appointed means for the separating in men of their chaff from their wheat, of whatever in them was light and trivial and poor from the solid and true, therefore he called these sorrows and griefs "tribulations," threshings, that is, of the inner spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting him for the heavenly garner.—Trench.