The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Hardship \Hard"ship\ (h[aum]rd"sh[i^]p), n.
   That which is hard to bear, as toil, privation, injury,
   injustice, etc. --Swift.
   [1913 Webster]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

hardship
    n 1: a state of misfortune or affliction; "debt-ridden farmers
         struggling with adversity"; "a life of hardship" [syn:
         adversity, hardship, hard knocks]
    2: something hard to endure; "the asperity of northern winters"
       [syn: asperity, grimness, hardship, rigor, rigour,
       severity, severeness, rigorousness, rigourousness]
    3: something that causes or entails suffering; "I cannot think
       it a hardship that more indulgence is allowed to men than to
       women"- James Boswell; "the many hardships of frontier life"

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

70 Moby Thesaurus words for "hardship":
   adverse circumstances, adversity, affliction, aggravation,
   annoyance, asperity, austerity, bad luck, blight, broken fortune,
   bummer, care, cross, curse, danger, deprivation, difficulties,
   difficulty, discomfort, distress, downer, drudgery, embarrassment,
   genteel poverty, hard knocks, hard life, hard lot, hard pinch,
   hardcase, hardness, hazard, ill fortune, impecuniosity,
   impecuniousness, insolvency, irritation, light purse, mischance,
   misery, misfortune, narrow means, peril, plight, poorness, poverty,
   predicament, pressure, privation, rigor, sea of troubles,
   slender means, straitened circumstances, straits, stress,
   stress of life, suffering, tight squeeze, toil, travail, trial,
   tribulation, trouble, troubles, unhappiness, unprosperousness,
   vale of tears, vicissitude, voluntary poverty, vows of poverty,
   want