Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Hard to do or accomplish; demanding considerable effort or skill; arduous: "To entertain is far more difficult than to enlighten” ( Anthony Burgess). See Synonyms at hard.
- adj. Hard to endure; trying: fell upon difficult times.
- adj. Hard to comprehend or solve: a difficult puzzle.
- adj. Hard to please, satisfy, or manage: a difficult child.
- adj. Hard to persuade or convince; stubborn.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Not easy; requiring or dependent on effort; hard; troublesome; arduous. Specifically— Hard as to doing or effecting; wanting facility of accomplishment: with an infinitive: as, it is difficult to convince him; a thing that is difficult to do or to find.
- Hard to do, perform, or overcome; attended with labor, pains, or opposition; laborious: as, a difficult undertaking.
- Hard to please or satisfy; not compliant; unaccommodating; rigid; austere: as, a person of difficult temper.
- Hard to persuade or induce; stubborn in yielding; obstinate as to opinion: as, he was difficult to convince.
- Hard to understand or solve; perplexing; puzzling: as, a difficult passage in an author; a difficult question or problem.
- Synonyms Difficult, Hard, Arduous (see arduous), laborious, toilsome; obscure, knotty.
- To make difficult; impede.
- To perplex; embarrass.
Wiktionary
- adj. hard, not easy, requiring much effort
- adj. hard to manage, uncooperative, troublesome; eg. said of a person, a horse, etc.
- v. obsolete, transitive To make difficult; to impede; to perplex.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Hard to do or to make; beset with difficulty; attended with labor, trouble, or pains; not easy; arduous.
- adj. Hard to manage or to please; not easily wrought upon; austere; stubborn.
- v. rare To render difficult; to impede; to perplex.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. hard to control
- adj. not easy; requiring great physical or mental effort to accomplish or comprehend or endure
Etymologies
- From difficulty, from Middle English difficultee, from Old French difficulté, from Latin difficultas, from difficul, older form of difficilis ("hard to do, difficult"), from dis- + facilis ("easy"); see difficile. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, back-formation from difficulte, difficulty; see difficulty. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“It is of course extremely difficult to collect satisfactory data on such a point, difficult to reach the men, to get trustworthy testimony, and to gauge that testimony by any generally acceptable criterion of success.”
“The uncertain light made her expression difficult to read, but Odosse thought she saw pain there—a great deal more pain than belonged in such a young face.”
“KING: Jeanette, what does the term difficult mean to you?”
“How freakin difficult is it to drop some food and water in there?”
“Felipe Massa did his best to make Hamilton's clinching of the title difficult as he took pole today for the Brazilian GP.”
“Among other stocks, Anglo-Dutch consumer-products group Unilever gained 2.7% in London, after reporting a 10% increase in first-half profit despite what it termed "difficult markets.”
The Wall Street Journal: European Stocks Skid 3.4%; Biggest Drop in 15 Months
“Throughout the questioning, Mr. Moreno, 43, adhered to his testimony, expressing shock that the woman had leveled charges of rape against him despite his best efforts to be supportive during what he described as a "difficult" time for her.”
“BLITZER: Right now, President Obama's clearly rethinking his response to what he calls a difficult chapter in America's history.”
“He clearly is now rethinking his response to what he calls a difficult chapter in America's history.”
“David Paterson and his wife faced reporters today in Albany, revealing they both had affairs during what they call a difficult period a few years back.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘difficult’.
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EU Buzz - ALL words and expressions
A combined list of
1. EU Buzz - single words
2. EU Buzz - collocations
3. EU Buzz - the 100 most active
collocation constituentsabsorption capacity, absorption rate, acceding country, accession candidate, accession countries, accession country, accession criteria, accession cycle, accession negotia..., accession partner..., accession priorities, accession treaty and 2650 more...
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EU Buzz - single words (1+2+3)
1. Strictly EU terms with special European meaning used only in the EU
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2. Keywords central to the understanding of the EU (people working for the EU are usually able to give thematic...acceleration, action, additionality, administrator, agenda, agricultural, agri-environmental, agriflation, agri-food, applicant, approach, assent and 1325 more...
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Dr Adv Ujwala D Andrews
love, holy, intimate, lents, arbritary, revenge, difficult, prescribe, scribe, decree, heriot, registration, injunction and 10 more...
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The Medley of Me
A jumble of words, sometimes contradictory, that add up to me. I'll probably be adding to this list for some time, because I'm a very complex individual. ;P
male, long-haired, big-eyed, writer, artist, guitarist, songsmith, talespinner, pilot, wannabe barnstormer, gypsy, cuddlesome and 209 more...
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Miss Sunshine
she's such a joy.
bereaved, bitter, cheerless, dejected, depressed, despairing, despondent, disconsolate, dismal, distressed, doleful, downcast and 405 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
a, abandon, ability, able, abortion, about, above, abroad, absence, absolute, absolutely, absorb and 4334 more...
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The things they carried (List 2)
Listening to this as an audio book for the second time. Tim O'Brien uses simple words and phrases to great effect. Very few unfamilar and big words . The writing style reminds me of words from Joh...
The, Things, They, Carried, meant, fond, By necessity,, presented to him, far beyond, against the brick..., reaching, taut and 2940 more...
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Difficult to Understand
Words meaning difficult to understand
abstruse, subtile, subtle, covert, mystic, mystical, mysterious, diffuse, abstract, exquisite, obnubilous, obnubilate and 12 more...
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Dictation words
Dictation Word list
suddenly, plumber, transport, discipline, leaking, stethoscope, railway, fiercely, aeroplane, travelling, electrician, thieves and 49 more...
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climb every mountain
interesting mountains
humbug, strawberry, three-fingered jack, bolivar, driskill, neahkahnie, matterhorn, rainier, st. helens, hood, shasta, mckinley and 53 more...
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backformations
Inspired by the hilarious discussion of the word bant at around the five-minute mark of this video.
bant, maffick, surveil, ablute, pea, burgle, couth, liaise, reminisce, fluoresce, emote, enthuse and 31 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for difficult.
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