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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.)

See images of 'Difficult'

Etymology of 'Difficult'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Difficult" Quotes from Famous Books

... until school should be out. He did not at all relish what lay before him. He would like to have got out of it. He had been a federal judge; he had been an upright judge; he had met the responsibilities of his difficult office not only with learning, which is desirable, but also with courage and common sense besides, and these are essential. He had been a stanch servant of the law. And now he was invited to defend that which, at first sight, nay, even at second and third sight, must always seem a defiance ...

— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... a very difficult thing to map out just the precise localities where criminals reside now, owing, in a great measure, to the efficiency of the present police, who keep evil-doers under constant surveillance, preventing them ...

— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... till he saw at some distance a building, with light shining though it in a peculiar way; and now the path became very rugged and difficult. He came to a standstill, and eyed the place where his rival was working at that moment. He eyed it with a strange mixture of feelings. It had saved his life and hers, after all. He fell into another mood, and began to laugh at himself ...

— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... against foreign invasion; secondly, against internal sedition. Shall all the States, then, be bound to defend each, and shall each be at liberty to introduce a weakness which will render defence more difficult? Shall one part of the United States be bound to defend another part, and that other part be at liberty, not only to increase its own danger, but to withhold the compensation for the burden? If slaves are ...

— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... Duke's death]—had passed the Somme with 4,000 Germans. Now, as in general disturbances one piece of bad news seldom comes singly, five or six stories of this kind were published at the same time, which made me think I should find it as difficult a task to raise the spirits of the people as I had before to restrain them. I was never so nonplussed in all my life. I saw the full extent of the danger, and everything looked terrible. Yet the greatest perils have their charms if never so little glory is discovered in the prospect ...

— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

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