difficult

Hard, not easy, requiring much effort.

Adjective

  1. Hard, not easy, requiring much effort.
    • difficult of accomplishment
    • However, the difficult weather conditions will ensure Yunnan has plenty of freshwater.
    • There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world, alone. - 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 17, in The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and...
  2. Hard to manage, uncooperative, troublesome.
    • Stop being difficult and eat your broccoli—you know it's good for you.
  3. Unable or unwilling.
    • “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.” - 1749, Henry Fielding, The History...

Origin

From Middle English difficult (ca. 1400), a back-formation from difficulte (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”). The verb is from the adjective, partly after Middle French difficulter and its etymon Latin difficultō. Compare difficilitate, difficultate, and Italian difficoltare.

Forms

more difficult most difficult

Synonyms

burdensome cumbersome hard arduous challenging nasty difficult effortful rough rocky thistly tough uneath unsimple

Antonyms

easy

Hyponyms

burdensome complex incomprehensible killing murderous subtle

Related

awkward backbreaking cumbersome get blood from a stone get blood out of a stone heavy nail Jell-O to a tree problematic pull teeth difficult situation test

Derived

difficultate difficultly difficultness difficult nut to crack difficult pill to swallow superdifficult trifficult undifficult

Verb

  1. To make difficult, hinder; 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

Forms

difficults difficulting difficulted