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Hard to do or to make; beset with difficulty; attended with labor, trouble, or pains; not easy; arduous.

To render difficult; to difficilitate. [Obs.] Cotgrave.

With difficulty. Cowper.

Difficulty. [R.] Golding.

The state of being difficult, or hard to do; hardness; arduousness; -- opposed to easiness or facility; as, the difficulty of a task or enterprise; a work of difficulty. Not being able to promote them [the interests of life] on account of the difficulty of the region. James Byrne.

; exiting in the mind only; as, abstract truth, abstract numbers. Hence: ideal; abstruse; difficult.

Abstract; abstruse; difficult. [Obs.] Johnson.

Remote from apprehension; difficult to be comprehended or understood; recondite; as, abstruse learning. Profound and abstruse topics. Milman.

The quality of being abstruse; difficulty of apprehension. Boyle.

were accorded from the fray. Spenser. All which particulars, being confessedly knotty and difficult can never be accorded but by a competent stock of critical learning. South.

Doing; trouble; difficulty; troublesome business; fuss; bustle; as, to make a great ado about trifles. With much ado, he partly kept awake. Dryden. Let's follow to see the end of this ado. Shak.

se of the mental faculties; exhibiting skill and readiness in avoiding danger or escaping difficulty; ready in invention or execution; -- applied to persons and to acts; as, an adroit mechanic, an adroit reply. "Adroit in the application of the telescope and quadrant." Horsley. "He was adroit in intrigue." Macaulay.…

That which is done or is to be done; matter; concern; as, a difficult affair to manage; business of any kind, commercial, professional, or public; -- often in the plural. "At the head of affairs." Junius. "A talent for affairs." Prescott.

Accurate perception; true estimation; as, an appreciation of the difficulties before us; an appreciation of colors. His foreboding showed his appreciation of Henry's character. J. R. Green.

Attended with great labor, like the ascending of acclivities; difficult; laborious; as, an arduous employment, task, or enterprise.

In an arduous manner; with difficulty or laboriousness.

The quality of being arduous; difficulty of execution.

Sharpness; disagreeableness; difficulty. The acclivities and asperities of duty. Barrow.

To encounter or meet purposely with the view of mastering, as an obstacle, difficulty, or the like. The thorny wilds the woodmen fierce assail. Pope.

A disease, characterized by difficulty of breathing (due to a spasmodic contraction of the bronchi), recurring at intervals, accompanied with a wheezing sound, a sense of constriction in the chest, a cough, and expectoration.