DIFFICULT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Difficult

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/dˈɪfəkəlt/ Listen

adjective

Difficult adj.

Hard to do or to make; beset with difficulty; attended with labor, trouble, or pains; not easy; arduous. Note: Difficult implies the notion that considerable mental effort or skill is required, or that obstacles are to be overcome which call for sagacity and skill in the agent; as, a difficult task; hard work is not always difficult work; a difficult operation in surgery; a difficult passage in an author. "There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, and difficult world, alone."

Hard to manage or to please; not easily wrought upon; austere; stubborn; as, a difficult person.

Synonyms: Arduous; painful; crabbed; perplexed; laborious; unaccommodating; troublesome. See Arduous.

verb

Difficult v. t. To render difficult; to impede; to perplex. (R.)

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Etymology of 'Difficult'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Difficult" Quotes from Famous Books

... almost every European language, which he spoke with indifferent incorrectness; the coachman was happy to drive her out; the page cried when he heard she was ill; and Calverley and Coldstream (those two footmen, so large, so calm ordinarily, and so difficult to move), broke out into extraordinary hilarity at the news of her convalescence, and intoxicated the page at a wine shop, to fete Laura's recovery. Even Lady Diana Pynsent (our former acquaintance Mr. Pynsent had married by this time), Lady ...

— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... not exist in them, but they in me.... I am dear to the spiritually wise beyond possessions, and he is dear to me. A great-minded man who is convinced that Vasudevu (Krishna) is everything is difficult to find.... If one worships any inferior personage with faith, I make his faith constant. Gifted with such faith, he seeks the propitiation of this personage, and from him receives the pleasant objects of his desires, which ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... of his companions were drowned, Ashley and one other survived the wreck, climbed the canyon wall, and found their way across the Wasatch Mountains to Salt Lake City, living chiefly on berries, as they wandered through an unknown and difficult country. When they arrived at Salt Lake they were almost destitute of clothing and nearly starved. The Mormon people gave them food and clothing and employed them to work on the foundation of the Temple until they had ...

— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... the relation of Pyrrhonism to the Academy, the connection between the two is difficult to exactly determine, between the time of Pyrrho and that of Aenesidemus. Scepticism in the Academy was, however, never absolutely identical with Pyrrhonism, although at certain periods of the history of the Academy the difference was slight. We can trace throughout ...

— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick

... can determine its reality. And when this unhallowed link has once been established, retribution overtakes us. For when the reality of the thing is independently certain, we [then] have to admit that the reality of the thing should determine our approval of that thing. I find it difficult to imagine ...

— The Meaning of Truth • William James

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