Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Difficult

Dif′fi·cult (dĭf′fĭ·kŭlt), a. [From Difficulty.] 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, v. t. To render difficult; to impede; to perplex. [R.] Sir W. Temple.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty.