difficulty

Roget category 704

5. Words relating to the voluntary powers
› 5.4. Antagonism
›› 5.4.1. Conditional antagonism

#704. Difficulty

noun

difficulty — hardness etc. adj. — impracticability etc. (impossibility) 471 — tough work, hard work, uphill work — hard task, Herculean task, Augean task^† — task of Sisyphus, Sisyphean labor, tough job, teaser, rasper^†, dead lift.
dilemma, embarrassment — deadlock — perplexity etc. (uncertainty) 475 — intricacy — entanglement, complexity etc. 59 — cross fire — awkwardness, delicacy, ticklish card to play, knot, Gordian knot, dignus vindice nodus [Lat.], net, meshes, maze — coil etc. (convolution) 248 — crooked path — involvement.
nice point, delicate point, subtle point, knotty point — vexed question, vexata quaestio [Lat.], poser — puzzle etc. (riddle) 533 — paradox — hard nut to crack, nut to crack — bone to pick, crux, pons asinorum [Lat.], where the shoe pinches.
nonplus, quandary, strait, pass, pinch, pretty pass, stress, brunt — critical situation, crisis — trial, rub, emergency, exigency, scramble.
scrape, hobble, slough, quagmire, hot water, hornet's nest — sea of troubles, peck of troubles — pretty kettle of fish — pickle, stew, imbroglio, mess, ado — false position.
set fast, stand, standstill — deadlock, dead set.
fix, horns of a dilemma, cul de sac [Fr.] — hitch — stumbling block etc. (hindrance) 706.
[difficult person] crab — curmudgeon.

verb

be difficult etc. adj. — run one hard, go against the grain, try one's patience, put one out — put to one's shifts, put to one's wit's end — go hard with one, try one — pose, perplex etc. (uncertain) 475 — bother, nonplus, gravel, bring to a deadlock — be impossible etc. 471 — be in the way of etc. (hinder) 706.
meet with difficulties — labor under difficulties — get into difficulties — plunge into difficulties — struggle with difficulties — contend with difficulties — grapple with difficulties — labor under a disadvantage — be in difficulty etc. adj.. fish in troubled waters, buffet the waves, swim against the stream, scud under bare poles.
Have much ado with, have a hard time of it — come to the push, come to the pinch — bear the brunt.
grope in the dark, lose one's way, weave a tangled web, walk among eggs.
get into a scrape etc. n. — bring a hornet's nest about one's ears — be put to one's shifts — flounder, boggle, struggle — not know which way to turn etc. (uncertain) 475 — perdre son Latin [Fr.] — stick at, stick in the mud, stick fast — come to a stand, come to a standstill, come to a deadlock — hold the wolf by the ears, hold the tiger by the tail.
render difficult etc. adj. — enmesh, encumber, embarrass, ravel, entangle — put a spoke in the wheel etc. (hinder) 706 — lead a pretty dance.

adjective

difficult, not easy, hard, tough — troublesome, toilsome, irksome — operose^†, laborious, onerous, arduous, Herculean, formidable — sooner said than done — more easily said than done, easier said than done.
difficult to deal with, hard to deal with — ill-conditioned, crabbed, crabby — not to be handled with kid gloves, not made with rose water.
awkward, unwieldy, unmanageable — intractable, stubborn etc. (obstinate) 606 — perverse, refractory, plaguy^†, trying, thorny, rugged — knotted, knotty — invious^† — pathless, trackless — labyrinthine etc. (convoluted) 248 — intricate, complicated etc. (tangled) 59 — impracticable etc. (impossible) 471 — not feasible etc. 470 — desperate etc. (hopeless) 859.
embarrassing, perplexing etc. (uncertain) 475 — delicate, ticklish, critical — beset with difficulties, full of difficulties, surrounded by difficulties, entangled by difficulties, encompassed with difficulties.
under a difficulty — in a box — in difficulty, in hot water, in the suds, in a cleft stick, in a fix, in the wrong box, in a scrape etc. n., in deep water, in a fine pickle — in extremis — between two stools, between Scylla and Charybdis — surrounded by shoals, surrounded by breakers, surrounded by quicksands — at cross purposes — not out of the wood.
reduced to straits — hard pressed, sorely pressed — run hard — pinched, put to it, straitened — hard up, hard put to it, hard set — put to one's shifts — puzzled, at a loss, etc. (uncertain) 475 — at the end of one's tether, at the end of one's rope, at one's wit's end, at a nonplus, at a standstill — graveled, nonplused, nonplussed, stranded, aground — stuck fast, set fast — up a tree, at bay, aux abois [Fr.], driven into a corner, driven from pillar to post, driven to extremity, driven to one's wit's end, driven to the wall — au bout de son Latin — out of one's depth — thrown out.
accomplished with difficulty — hard-fought, hard-earned.

adverb

with difficulty, with much ado — barely, hardly etc. adj. — uphill — against the stream, against the grain — d rebours [Fr.] — invita Minerva [Lat.] — in the teeth of — at a pinch, upon a pinch — at long odds, against long odds.

phrase

ay there's the rub" [Hamlet]; hic labor hoc opus [Lat.] [Vergil]; things are come to a pretty pass, ab inconvenienti [Lat.] — ad astra per aspera [Lat.] — acun chemin de fleurs ne conduit a la gloire [Fr.].

The content on this page comes straight from Project Gutenberg Etext of Roget's Thesaurus No. Two, which consists of the acclaimed work by Peter Mark Roget augmented with more recent material. Some changes were made to the formatting for improved readability.

Bold numbers signify related Roget categories. A dagger symbol (†) indicates archaic words and expressions no longer in common use.

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