Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Difficult
1.
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.
Syn. – Arduous; painful; crabbed; perplexed; laborious; unaccommodating; troublesome. See
Arduous
. Dif′fi-cult
,Verb.
T.
To render difficult; to impede; to perplex.
[R.]
Sir W. Temple.
Webster 1828 Edition
Difficult
DIFFICULT
,Adj.
1.
Hard to be made, done or performed; not easy; attended with labor and pains; as, our task is difficult. It is difficult to persuade men to abandon vice. It is difficult to ascend a steep hill, or travel a bad road.2.
Hard to be pleased; not easily wrought upon; not readily yielding; not compliant; unaccommodating; rigid; austere; not easily managed or persuaded; as a difficult man; a person of a difficult temper.3.
Hard to be ascended as a hill, traveled as a road, or crossed as a river, &c. We say, a difficult ascent; a difficult road; a difficult river to cross; &c.