difficult
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Middle English difficult (ca. 1400), a back-formation from difficultee (whence modern difficulty), from Old French difficulté, from Latin difficultas, from difficul, older form of difficilis (“hard to do, difficult”), from dis- + facilis (“easy”); see difficile. Replaced native Middle English earveþ (“difficult, hard”), from Old English earfoþe (“difficult, laborious, full of hardship”), cognate to German Arbeit (“work”).
Pronunciation
[edit]Adjective
[edit]difficult (comparative more difficult, superlative most difficult)
- Hard, not easy, requiring much effort.
- However, the difficult weather conditions will ensure Yunnan has plenty of freshwater.
- 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 17, in The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC:
- There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world, alone.
- 2008, Daniel Goleman, Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama, →ISBN, page 199:
- In adults, the same kind of anger has been studied in people trying to solve a very difficult math problem. Though the tough math problem is very frustrating, there is an active attempt to solve the problem and meet the goal.
- 2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
- Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. […] But as a foundation for analysis it is highly subjective: it rests on difficult decisions about what counts as a territory, what counts as output and how to value it. Indeed, economists are still tweaking it.
- (often of a person, or a horse, etc) Hard to manage, uncooperative, troublesome.
- Stop being difficult and eat your broccoli—you know it's good for you.
- (obsolete) Unable or unwilling.
- 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling:
- “I hope, madam,” said Jones, “my charming Lady Bellaston will be as difficult to believe anything against one who is so sensible of the many obligations she hath conferred upon him.”
Usage notes
[edit]Difficult implies that considerable mental effort or physical skill is required, or that obstacles are to be overcome which call for sagacity and skill in the doer; as, a difficult task. Thus, “hard” is not always synonymous with difficult. Examples include a difficult operation in surgery and a difficult passage by an author (that is, a passage which is hard to understand).
Synonyms
[edit]- burdensome, cumbersome, hard
- see also Thesaurus:difficult
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]hard, not easy
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hard to manage (said of a person, horse, etc.)
Verb
[edit]difficult (third-person singular simple present difficults, present participle difficulting, simple past and past participle difficulted)
- (obsolete, transitive) To make difficult; to impede; to perplex.
- August 9 1678, William Temple, letter to Joseph Williamson
- their Excellencies having desisted from their pretensions , which had difficulted the peace
- August 9 1678, William Temple, letter to Joseph Williamson
Translations
[edit]make difficult; impede
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Further reading
[edit]- “difficult”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “difficult”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English back-formations
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Latin
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