ARDUOUS • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Arduous

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/ˈɑrdʒuəs/ Listen

adjective

Arduous adj.

Steep and lofty, in a literal sense; hard to climb. "Those arduous paths they trod."

Attended with great labor, like the ascending of acclivities; difficult; laborious; as, an arduous employment, task, or enterprise.

Synonyms: Difficult; trying; laborious; painful; exhausting. Arduous, Hard, Difficult. Hard is simpler, blunter, and more general in sense than difficult; as, a hard duty to perform, hard work, a hard task, one which requires much bodily effort and perseverance to do. Difficult commonly implies more skill and sagacity than hard, as when there is disproportion between the means and the end. A work may be hard but not difficult. We call a thing arduous when it requires strenuous and persevering exertion, like that of one who is climbing a precipice; as, an arduous task, an arduous duty. "It is often difficult to control our feelings; it is still harder to subdue our will; but it is an arduous undertaking to control the unruly and contending will of others."

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Etymology of 'Arduous'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Arduous" Quotes from Famous Books

... led on a grand scale. Vast encampments, which for size, regularity, and order vie with the old Roman castra, are formed at convenient spots. And here all the details of actual service are imitated; cavalry and infantry are disciplined in equally arduous labors; nor does the artillery escape the fatigue ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... the direction of the cage of the despised "Bandar Log," and made the smaller animals uneasy. The woman who was described on the programme as "Miss ——, Famous Society Woman," had torn herself away from her arduous social duties with the Four Hundred to exhibit a troupe of leopards to a Coney Island audience, her identity concealed by a small black mask, and her performance in the big cage was interrupted by the noise; so the Proprietor thought it ...

— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe

... her a great deal in her English as she is afraid this will have to be her last year at college. She feels that she is needed at home to carry on the work of her friend and teacher Miss Allfriend, whose long and arduous labors among the mountain folk have impaired her health. Melissa thinks she should take up the work and give her friend a rest. Noble girl! Dicky Blount thinks so, too, and even more so. Did you know that he found or manufactured some business ...

— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... an arduous labour; it is not, as some ignorant persons think, a process of idle absorption; it is rather a state of strenuous endeavour, aided at any rate in its first stages by acts of steady detachment from the world of sense. Richard Raynal had passed through ...

— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson

... probable calculation, his change of purpose was politic. The fleets of England were numerous, and her seamen renowned. The Normans had neither experience nor fame in naval fights; their navy itself was scarcely formed. Thus, even William's landing in England was an enterprise arduous and dubious. Moreover, even granting the amplest success, would not this Norman Prince, so profound and ambitious, be a more troublesome lord to Earl Tostig ...

— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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