difficult Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. adjective not easy; requiring great physical or mental effort to accomplish or comprehend or endure
    hard.
    • a difficult task
    • nesting places on the cliffs are difficult of access
    • difficult times
    • why is it so hard for you to keep a secret?
  2. adjective hard to control
    unmanageable.
    • a difficult child", "an unmanageable situation

WordNet

Dif"fi*cult adjective
Etymology
From Difficulty.
Definitions
  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.
  2. Hard to manage or to please; not easily wrought upon; austere; stubborn; as, a difficult person. Syn. -- Arduous; painful; crabbed; perplexed; laborious; unaccommodating; troublesome. See Arduous.
Dif"fi*cult transitive verb
Definitions
  1. To render difficult; to impede; to perplex. R. Sir W. Temple.

Webster 1913