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[ noun ] an effort that is inconvenient
Synonyms Examples "I went to a lot of trouble" "he won without any trouble" "had difficulty walking" "finished the test only with great difficulty" Used in print (William G. Pollard, Physicist and Christian....)In it important elements of Christianity and of the Biblical view of reality in_general , which now cause us much difficulty , could be responded to quite naturally and spontaneously . (High Fidelity, 11:10...)If we return to them today , we have no difficulty spotting their weaknesses but we find them still pleasing . (Clifford H. Pope, The Giant Snakes....)Measurements of skins are of little value ; every snake hide is noticeably longer than its carcass and intentional stretching presents no difficulty to the unscrupulous explorer . (J. W. C. Hagstrom et al., "Debilitating muscular...)By Nov. 8 , 1958 , weakness , specifically involving the pelvic and thigh musculature , was pronounced , and a common complaint was `` difficulty in stepping up on to curbs '' . (Glayds H. Barr, The Master of Geneva....)With great difficulty John clambered to his feet and started to run , sweat pouring down his face . Related terms |
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[ noun ] a factor causing trouble in achieving a positive result or tending to produce a negative result
Examples "serious difficulties were encountered in obtaining a pure reagent" Used in print (Francis J. Johnston and John E. Willard, "The...)Despite extensive attempts to obtain highly pure reagents , serious difficulty was experienced in obtaining reproducible rates of reaction . Following observation of the fact that the reaction rates of supposedly identical reaction mixtures prepared on the same filling manifold and exposed under identical conditions often differed by several hundred per_cent , a systematic series of experiments was undertaken to see whether the difficulty could be ascribed to the method of preparing the chlorine , to the effects of oxygen or moisture or to the effect of surface to volume ratio in the reaction tubes . (Frederick Mosteller et al., Probability with...)We can escape_from such a difficulty by ruling_out the animal as not constituting a trial , but such a solution is not always satisfactory . (Max F. Millikan and Donald L. M. Blackmer,...)Most countries in this second category share the difficulty of having many of the structures of a modern political and social_system without the modern standards of performance required to make them effective . (Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land....)The word `` church '' which turned_up over_and_over_again among Jubal 's words gave him knotty difficulty ; there was no Martian concept to match it - unless one took `` church '' and `` worship '' and `` God '' and `` congregation '' and many other words and equated them to the totality of the only world he had known during growing waiting & & & then forced the concept back into English in_that phrase which had been rejected ( by each differently ) by Jubal , by Mahmoud , by Digby . |
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[ noun ] a situation or condition almost beyond one's ability to deal with and requiring great effort to bear or overcome
Examples : "grappling with financial difficulties" Used in print (Raymond C. Binder et al., editors, Proceedings...)However , technical difficulties arise by melting at local hot spots . (Max F. Millikan and Donald L. M. Blackmer,...)If modernization programs are imposed from above , without the understanding and cooperation of the people , they will encounter grave difficulties . (William S. Haymond, "Is Distance an Original...)( 1 ) When an object was placed in the patient 's hand , he had no difficulty determining whether it was warm or cold , sharp or blunt , rough or smooth , flexible , soft , or hard ; and he could tell , simply by the feel of it , whether it was made of wood , iron , cloth , rubber , and_so_on . If the argument is accepted as essentially sound up to this point , it remains for us to consider whether the patient 's difficulties in orienting himself spatially and in locating objects in space with the sense_of_touch can be explained by his defective visual condition . |
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[ noun ] the quality of being difficult
Synonyms Examples "they agreed about the difficulty of the climb" Used in print (Dan McLachlan, Jr., "Communication Networks and...)Since the difficulty of drawing the net is great , we will merely discuss it . (H. A. Gleason, "Review of African language studies...)The difficulty of analysis of any subsystem in the phonology is an inverse_function of the size - smaller systems are more troublesome - for any given degree of morphophonemic complexity . |
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