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difficulty

[dif-i-kuhl-tee, -kuhl-tee]

Example Sentences Origin

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noun, plural -ties.

the fact or condition of being difficult.

Often, difficul·ties. an embarrassing situation, especially of financial affairs.

a trouble or struggle.

a cause of trouble, struggle, or embarrassment.

a disagreement or dispute.

EXPAND

reluctance; unwillingness.

a demur; objection.

something that is hard to do, understand, or surmount; an impediment or obstacle.

COLLAPSE

Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English difficulte (< Anglo-French ) < Latin difficultās, equivalent to difficil(is) difficile + -tās -ty²

Related forms

pre·dif·fi·cul·ty, noun, plural -ties.

Synonyms
2. dilemma, predicament, quandary, plight, fix, exigency, strait. 3. problem.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Difficulty is always a great word to know.

So is ort. Does it mean:

a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.

the offspring of a zebra and a donkey.

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Example Sentences

Breathing difficulty involves a sensation of difficult or uncomfortable breathing or a feeling of not getting enough air.

In particular, it works against those who have difficulty getting into university because of socio-economic disadvantage.

The difficulty of losing weight is captured in a new model.

EXPAND

Breathing difficulty involves a sensation of difficult or uncomfortable breathing or a feeling of not getting enough air.

In particular, it works against those who have difficulty getting into university because of socio-economic disadvantage.

The difficulty of losing weight is captured in a new model.

Both locations offer views of wildlife and a variety of difficulty levels.

Our senses have difficulty parsing stimuli linked to a negative event.

Everything about albatrosses underscores the difficulty of eking out an existence in their environment.

The game also boasts three difficulty levels, so there's a decent amount of replay value.

Beneficiaries may have more difficulty getting therapy services after a stroke, traumatic brain injury or hip fracture.

The difficulty in identifying instances of plagiarism, the pair said, is evident in the numbers.

Europe's bankers complain endlessly about the difficulty of cutting costs.

Because of limited donor pools, minorities have had difficulty finding suitable matches.

One problem with research of this kind is the difficulty involved in controlling potential confounding variables.

It was unprecedented both in the scale of human damage done and the difficulty of hunting down those who did it.

Their difficulty may stem from the tricky finances involved.

Difficulty when swallowing is the sensation that food is stuck in the throat or upper chest.

My daughter has always had difficulty transitioning.

If people come they tend to stay, because the cost and difficulty of crossing the border have increased so steeply.

Narcoleptics often have difficulty both staying asleep and staying awake.

Nepalese porters carry seemingly crushing loads with what appears to be little difficulty.

Despite the difficulty of this technique, he burnished out parts of the composition and made radical changes.

There are no preferences to adjust difficulty or the level where you begin.

The movements are usually a sign of difficulty with breathing.

Unfortunately for many people, the immune system has difficulty telling friend from foe when confronted with cancer.

Then there is the astonishing difficulty of consistently hitting the right notes, let alone making music.

But many species aren't able to move far enough or will have difficulty fleeing in the future, researchers say.

The difficulty of a task stretches out our perception of time.

For each correct answer, players will earn a range of points, depending on the difficulty of the question.

The final round of tests was the same difficulty level as the initial test.

People with her condition historically haven't gone to college and often have difficulty graduating from high school.

Other people, though, think they may be able to get round this difficulty.

Yikes, can't believe that this program has such difficulty printing.

The difficulty is that crystals stabilize themselves.

There are three playable levels of difficulty upon starting the game, easy, medium and hard.

While plenty of faculty members could use help publicizing their expertise, few have difficulty expressing their opinions.

One of his principal ideas is the difficulty of forecasting given the role of chance and extreme events.

It gives you an incredible respect for these cultures that have faced such profound despair and difficulty.

The difficulty has been actually figuring out what species of bacteria might benefit us and also how, and/or why.

Let's put it a different way, there are no levels of difficulty.

For starters, high-crime areas tend to have difficulty attracting retail businesses.

Astronomers naturally tend to doubt that explanation but have had difficulty coming up with a better one.

Current encryption practices, such as those used for online shopping sites, take advantage of this difficulty.

Events from space can do things to the surface that flatlanders would have difficulty understanding.

Along the way, the terrain varied in climbing difficulty.

But continuous miniaturisation brings problems beyond the mere practical difficulty of actually putting the tiny devices together.

Each summer wildland firefighters face difficulty and even death.

The spacecraft's travails highlight the difficulty of working remotely in the inhospitable environment of deep space.

The difficulty increases as the soccer balls speed up and the goals get larger.

The biggest difficulty is how a currency board responds to capital outflows.

It tasted a little weird, but if you didn't think about it, you could eat them without difficulty.

Scientists have had difficulty pinpointing the position and behavior of the human tongue as a person speaks.

Most comparable tablets have had difficulty matching the iPad's price.

The difficulty of recreating the textures of both skin and fabric means the effect is less convincing when seen close up.

Difficulty moving, trembling in the hands and memory loss all are signs of mercury poisoning.

The major difficulty with quantum mechanics is its interpretation.

Beating the campaign unlocks a difficulty level and another character.

The main difficulty has to do with water, which is especially needed to transport the coal, via a slurry pipeline.

He says the difficulty in detecting them may be due to the bird's extremely low population density.

They rarely learn from their mistakes or benefit from negative feedback, and they have difficulty inhibiting their impulses.

Eating out often poses a difficulty for people who follow strict diets.

Despite its success, readers confessed to difficulty in grasping its more abstruse concepts.

He is now depressed, sleeping poorly and having difficulty concentrating.

Science operates according to a law of conservation of difficulty.

It occurs to me that the difficulty comes from the focus on the guest's odds of winning.

Locke met this difficulty by a theory of primary and secondary qualities.

People have more difficulty shedding fears toward members of other races than toward those of their own, a study finds.

Average schmoes can make a gorilla-suited dude pounding his chest go poof, thanks in part to a common difficulty with focusing.

Overwhelmed, campus police had difficulty identifying the perpetrators and made only two arrests on game day.

One of the main reasons for the slow progress is the difficulty of finding premises.

The field fixes its errors with more difficulty than it would have you believe.

But there is a stronger argument than the difficulty of maintaining high standards in a dodgy industry:.

But scientists have had difficulty figuring out how such a capture might have occurred.

As a photographer it appeals because of the difficulty of taking the shot.

Gymnasts now receive separate marks for degree of difficulty and for execution in each event.

Think carefully about the difficulty level of your questions, though.

These anchors are devised in prosperous times but run into difficulty during recessions.

It does them no harm, although if they eat too many they may have some difficulty digesting a surfeit of cicada.

As a result, patients have difficulty controlling their movements and experience a range of cognitive and emotional problems.

The only difficulty on these flat trails is trying to take in all of the beautiful surroundings.

The researchers hope to make this commercially available in a couple of years as an aid for those who have difficulty walking.

Both testers, however, had difficulty getting recognized when the lighting was dimmed.

If you look around these fora you will discover many highly qualified people having a lot of difficulty finding any job.

The difficulty is that at the moment they can't promise that.

The members of the family also have dyslexic tendencies, difficulty processing sentences, and poor spelling and grammar.

Hwang's accomplishment highlights the enormous technical difficulty in working with human cells compared with mouse cells.

In single player campaign, there are three degrees of difficulty.

She is currently having difficulty with her meds, but hopes to find one that works soon.

Many aid workers who experience traumatic events have difficulty coping with them later on.

To be sure, the building has seen more than its share of difficulty and danger as well.

They will now have to prise themselves apart, with great difficulty and at great cost.

It's the difficulty of moving this dense sand that causes the problem.

The difficulty of the task distorts our perception of distance.

The difficulty of breaking off an unpleasant collaboration may help perpetuate the jerk species in academe.

The difficulty for marketers is creating the right kind of buzz and learning to control it.

Ask students to consider the difficulty of weighing the plant's importance against the needs of local residents.

Many developers have complained about the difficulty communicating.

They are having difficulty with the vocabulary sections and reading comprehension.

Then there is the difficulty of finding clothes that fit.

Veterinarians stayed through the night to care for the calf after noticing it had difficulty swimming and breathing.

At first the effort was called quixotic and impossible, given the scale of the problem and the difficulty in raising corals.

The single player game has one difficulty setting that you'll probably clear in ten minutes.

But question difficulty will only change at the beginning of a new section of the test, not with each new question.

If students have difficulty with these terms, you may wish to spend additional time reinforcing the meanings of the words.

He said it is symptomatic of the art world's difficulty with finding a place for this type of work.

The adviser doesn't tell her what she should do, but she has little difficulty deciding.

The affair has exposed both the reality of polygamy and the difficulty of doing anything about.

One handicap that women continue to suffer is their difficulty in attracting funding for such ventures.

The first problem he noticed was a difficulty seeing at night, a common early symptom.

But they've had difficulty finding a sizeable market.

But a major difficulty for professors has always been trying to sort high-quality materials from less-reputable items.

Moreover, if the supposed skill shortage affects a fifth of vacancies, that means four-fifths fill without difficulty.

But the team encountered difficulty in securing the left flipper, which fell off on several occasions.

As shown by the difficulty of detecting it in any objective way.

Children who have difficulty with language at a young age have a hard time picking up more difficult concepts later on, they say.

Also, participants were recruited from a single university, hence indicating the difficulty of generalizing results.

The government has therefore had no difficulty in executing a smart.

In fact cognitive studies suggest that young children have difficulty understanding what the concept of death means.

Live music has traditionally presented significant difficulty for digital distributors due to a tangled rights situation.

The difficulty is compounded if a linguist is not fluent in the language he is studying.

Castro's face expresses the difficulty that his job sometimes entails.

Part of the difficulty stems from the fact that the nerve endings in question are extremely small.

To cope with the difficulty of hobo life, hobos developed a system of symbols, or a code.

Astronomers therefore have difficulty looking both carefully and comprehensively.

Curtiss found difficulty in stopping this, although he directed the horizontal rudder downward to the full extent.

The difficulty is in extending the studio to do that.

Even so, using patents as a proxy for innovation remains fraught with difficulty.

At appears that humans have difficulty learning from experience in more complex environments.

The only down side here is the difficulty to ensure you stay on the right spot when playing the game.

The difficulty with such studies is that they reflect averages.

As you point out, the difficulty is in effectively addressing overpopulation.

We ended up having some difficulty with the size restriction.

The tech industry is also concerned about the difficulty of importing skilled labour.

Perhaps the problem is that the industry has difficulty generating economies of scale.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

difficulty (ˈdɪfɪk^əltɪ)

—n , pl -ties
1.	the state or quality of being difficult
2.	a task, problem, etc, that is hard to deal with
3.	(often plural) a troublesome or embarrassing situation, esp a financial one
4.	a dispute or disagreement
5.	(often plural) an objection or obstacle: he always makes difficulties
6.	a trouble or source of trouble; worry
7.	lack of ease; awkwardness: he could run only with difficulty

[C14: from Latin difficultās, from difficilis difficult, from dis- not + facilis easy, facile]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

difficulty

late 14c., from O.Fr. difficulte, from L. difficultatem (nom. difficultus), from difficilis "hard," from dis- "not, away from" + facilis "easy" (see facile).

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