DIFFICULT • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • 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

... knocking about over here that considerable rigmarole is required to meet an Englishman. And very probably few who have tried it would dispute that it is somewhat difficult to "meet" an ordinary Englishman to whom you are not known in a railway carriage. With the big 'uns, however, the business appears to be simple enough. Foolish doings do clutter up one's luggage with letters of introduction when all that is needed to board round ...

— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... Jofrid also waited daily for him to speak to her father or to herself about the matter. But Toenne could not. This showed that he was of a race of slaves. The thoughts that came into his head moved as slowly as the sun when he travels across the sky. And it was more difficult for him to shape those thoughts to connected speech than for a smith to forge a bracelet out of ...

— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... Dresser, who was rising at laborious hours and toiling in the McNamara and Hill's offices, he realized how unmentionable and trifling were his grounds for hesitation. Dresser's enthusiasm almost persuaded him that Lindsay had given him something valuable. And if he found it difficult to explain his distaste for the thing to Dresser, what would he have to say to other people—to the Hitchcocks? Yet he made his reservations to himself at least: he was not committed to his "career"; he should be merely a spectator, a free-lance, a critic, who keeps the precious treasure ...

— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... in the difficult lore Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberest The flowers, and thou measurest the stars; Thou severest element from element; Thy spirit is present in the Past, and sees 745 The birth of this old world through all its cycles Of desolation and of loveliness, And when man ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... already prolix with respect to these Gypsies, but I will not leave them quite yet. The intended combatants at length arrived; it was necessary to clear the ring,—always a troublesome and difficult task. Thurtell went up to the two Gypsies, with whom he seemed to be acquainted, and with his surly smile, said two or three words, which I, who was standing by, did not understand. The Gypsies smiled in return, and giving the reins of their animals to their mounted companion, ...

— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

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