difficult
/ˈdɪfɪkəlt/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: 5.07 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Hard to manage, uncooperative, troublesome.
Example Sentences
- "difficult of accomplishment"
- "However, the difficult weather conditions will ensure Yunnan has plenty of freshwater."
- "If they're difficult, offer them more."
- "There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world, alone."
- "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."
- "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."
Etymology
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: difficult, difficulter, difficultō
Usage
Inflected Forms
more difficult (comparative)
most difficult (superlative)
difficults (present, singular)
difficulting (participle, present)
difficulted (participle, past)
difficulted (past)