difficult Meaning, Definition & Usage
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adjective not easy; requiring great physical or mental effort to accomplish or comprehend or endure
hard.
- a difficult task
- nesting places on the cliffs are difficult of access
- difficult times
- why is it so hard for you to keep a secret?
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adjective hard to control
unmanageable.
- a difficult child", "an unmanageable situation
WordNet
Dif"fi*cult adjective
Etymology
FromDefinitions
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Hard to do or to make; beset with difficulty; attended with labor, trouble, or pains; not easy; arduous. ✍ 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. Hawthorne.
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Hard to manage or to please; not easily wrought upon; austere; stubborn; as, a .difficult personSyn. -- Arduous; painful; crabbed; perplexed; laborious; unaccommodating; troublesome. See Arduous .
Dif"fi*cult transitive verb
Definitions
To render difficult; to impede; to perplex. R. Sir W. Temple.