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To move or pass with difficulty; as, to rub through woods, as huntsmen; to rub through the world. To rub along or on, to go on with difficulty; as, they manage, with strict economy, to rub along. [Colloq.]

A rattling sound in the throat arising from difficulty of breathing; a rattle. [Obs.]

In a scant manner; with difficulty; scarcely; hardly. [Obs.] Bacon. So weak that he was scant able to go down the stairs. Fuller.

Sparing; niggardly; parsimonius. In illustrating a point of difficulty, be not too scanty of words. I. Watts.

With difficulty; hardly; scantly; barely; but just. With a scarce well-lighted flame. Milton. The eldest scarcely five year was of age. Chaucer. Slowly she sails, and scarcely stems the tides. Dryden. He had scarcely finished, when the laborer arrived who had been sent for my ransom. W. Irwing.

le and embrassing predicament, as it were, a painful rubbing or scraping; a perplexity; a difficulty. The too eager pursuit of this his old enemy through thick and thin has led him into many of these scrapes. Bp. Warburton.

Hesitation as to action from the difficulty of determining what is right or expedient; unwillingness, doubt, or hesitation proceeding from motives of conscience. He was made miserable by the conflict between his tastes and his scruples. Macaulay. To make scruple, to hesitate from conscientious motives; to scruple. Lock…

To cause to stop or stick; to obstruct; to fsten to a spot; hence, to occasion difficulty to; to embarrass; as, to set a coach in the mud. They show how hard they are set in this particular. Addison.

like, difficult to disentangle; entanglement; hence, intricate complication; embarrassing difficulty.

luble or solvable; as, the solubility of a salt; the solubility of a problem or intricate difficulty.

The quality or state of being solvable; as, the solvability of a difficulty; the solvability of a problem.

Profound sleep from which a person can be roused only with difficulty.

Fig.: Grief; affliction; trouble; difficulty. Chaucer. I see plainly where his sore lies. Sir W. Scott. Gold sore. (Med.) See under Gold, n.

to sow wheat. Also used figuratively: To spread abroad; to propagate. "He would sow some difficulty." Chaucer. A sower went forth to sow; and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside. Matt. xiii. 3, 4. And sow dissension in the hearts of brothers. Addison.

To discover by characters or marks; to read with difficulty; -- usually with out; as, to spell out the sense of an author; to spell out a verse in the Bible. To spell out a God in the works of creation. South. To sit spelling and observing divine justice upon every accident. Milton.

To be extended by drawing or beating; as, some metals spread with difficulty.

To sprinkle; to scatter. [Obs.] He would sowen some difficulty, Or springen cockle in our cleane corn. Chaucer.

To remain where placed; to be fixed; to hold fast to any position so as to be moved with difficulty; to cling; to abide; to cleave; to be united closely. A friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Prov. xviii. 24. I am a kind of bur; I shall stick. Shak. If on your fame our sex a bolt has thrown, 'T will ever stick…

. [Slang] Stiff neck, a condition of the neck such that the head can not be moved without difficulty and pain.

Fig.: A condition of narrowness or restriction; doubt; distress; difficulty; poverty; perplexity; -- sometimes in the plural; as, reduced to great straits. For I am in a strait betwixt two. Phil. i. 23. Let no man, who owns a Providence, grow desperate under any calamity or strait whatsoever. South. Ulysses made use of…