through the mill

adj

adj

Idiomatic Through a period of bad treatment or an ordeal.

My father found me a nuisance, and put me through the mill, and I can never forget it particularly the evenings.1907, E.M. Forster, The Longest Journey, Part II, XVIii [Uniform ed., p. 192]
‘He’s been through the mill, this one,’ she said.1999, J. K. Rowling, chapter 4, in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Bloomsbury:

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Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.