Word Finder - difficulty

definition

The state of being difficult, or hard to do.

definition

An obstacle that hinders achievement of a goal.

example

We faced a difficulty in trying to book a flight so late.

definition

(sometimes in the plural) Physical danger from the environment, especially with risk of drowning

example

2012 August 2, "Children rescued after getting into difficulties in Donegal" BBC Online

definition

An objection.

definition

That which cannot be easily understood or believed.

definition

An awkward situation or quarrel.

She kept her mouth closed this time with some difficulty and looked away.

The process causes physical difficulty and effort.

Unsettled at her unusual weakness, she watched Sami's squat form fold with difficulty as he crouched beside her.

I still found more difficulty in mastering problems in mathematics than I did in any other of my studies.

Rissa drew a deep breath with difficulty and forced her mind to focus.

Dean bumped along, skirting puddles but having no difficulty navigating the seldom-used route.

I had opted to skip the short flight to Santa Barbara as Betsy, the seasoned traveler, had no difficulty renting a car and maneuvering the traffic to pick me up at LAX.

He could imagine the difficulty in supporting a fam­ily of three on the figure.

The Aristotelian would find no difficulty in such a variability; it is only the disciple of Dalton to whom it seems impossible.

And evidently suppressing his vexation with difficulty, he turned away from the boy.

If I thought Howie might have difficulty napping, I was dead wrong.

Any portion of the underground rhizome when broken off is capable of producing a new plant; hence the difficulty of eradicating them when once established.

Martha Washington understood my signs, and I seldom had any difficulty in making her do just as I wished.

I had some difficulty in holding on, for the branches were very large and the bark hurt my hands.

This difficulty and some others may be corrected when she and Miss Sullivan have more time.

Nor are they afraid to venture out of their depth, being excellent swimmers, and able, by means of their trunks, to breathe without difficulty when the entire body is submerged.

There is a difficulty in reconciling observed values of the ionization with the results obtained from balloon ascents as to the variation of the potential with altitude.

Children seldom have any difficulty in understanding her; which suggests that her deliberate measured speech is like theirs, before they come to the adult trick of running all the words of a phrase into one movement of the breath.

Instead I listened to his harangue about the difficulty they encountered with the session I'd practically demanded, the break-ins in Boston.

There were two possible solutions of the difficulty.

In the absence of literary culture the Albanian dialects, as might be expected, are widely divergent; the limits of the two principal dialects correspond with the racial boundaries of the Ghegs and Tosks, who understand each other with difficulty; the Albanians in Greece and Italy have also separate dialects.

Matters about which there is any doubt or difficulty, or division of opinion in the session, may be carried for settlement to the next higher court, the presbytery.

President Roosevelt had little difficulty last spring in making Miss Keller understand him, and especially requested Miss Sullivan not to spell into her hand.

With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and shouting continually he moved on.

She got up and, walking on tiptoe with difficulty, went to the small sitting room.

His position was one of singular difficulty.

Although measures had thus been taken to secure uniformity of observance, and to put an end to a controversy which had endangered Christian unity, a new difficulty had to be encountered owing to the absence of any authoritative rule by which the paschal moon was to be ascertained.

Meantime, while recurring again and again, as was his custom, to this cardinal difficulty, Mill worked indefatigably in other directions where he saw his way clear.

It was not their first encounter, for a letter of 1299 to Edward from Scotland describes Comyn as having seized Bruce by the throat at a meeting at Peebles, where they were with difficulty reconciled by the regents.

To obviate this difficulty, the Scots Act 1449, c. 18, made possession of the subjects of the lease equivalent to sasine.

Lack of direct transport facilities is a difficulty.

This proved a palliation of his difficulty, but not a solution.

Sixteen battleships entered the Straits to participate in the encounter, the manoeuvring of so large a number of great vessels in this narrow space was a matter of some difficulty and also gave excellent targets for the Turkish artillery, which replied to their fire with unexpected spirit.

The extraction (as is the case with all the rare earths) is a matter of great difficulty.

These methods are used in exceptional cases, but present the obvious difficulty of giving FIG.

It is well known that if energy disappears in one form it reappears in another, and this principle applied to the sun will explain the famous difficulty.

The most noticeable features in his reign were the repeated and sudden changes of policy, which, while they arose from the extreme difficulty of finding any system by which the Habsburg monarchy could be governed, were due also to the personal idiosyncrasies of the emperor.

The origin of insect wings remains, therefore, a mystery, deepened by the difficulty of imagining any probable use for thoracic outgrowths, comparable to the wingrudiments of the Exopterygota, in the early stages of their evolution.

But when the time came for Alexius to fulfil his promises, the difficulty which had arisen at Venice in the autumn of 1202 repeated itself.

The difficulty which has generally presented itself to those who have tried to design instruments on the FIG.

The Malay language abounds in idiomatic expressions, which constitute the chief difficulty in its acquisition.

He was a member of the lower house of the Ohio legislature in 1821, 1822 and 1829, and of the national House of Representatives from 1831 to 1840; was governor of Ohio in 1840-1842; served in the United States Senate from 1845 to 1850; was secretary of the treasury in the cabinet of President Fillmore in 1850-1853; was again a member of the national House of Representatives from 1859 to 1861; and from 1861 to 1864 was minister of the United States to Mexico - a position of peculiar difficulty at that time.

The great difficulty which has been felt by investigators in determining the character and attributes of the god Baal mainly arises from the original.

The history of Baalism among the Hebrews is obscured by the difficulty of determining whether the false worship which the prophets stigmatize is the heathen worship of Yahweh under a conception, and often with rites, which treated him as a local nature god; or whether Baalism was consciously recognized to be distinct from Yahwism from the first.

His great difficulty lay in managing his colleagues, who were, especially Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, able men of strong wills and jarring tempers.

For the architectural embellishment of the city the finest building material was procurable without difficulty and in abundance; Pentelicus forms a mass of white, transparent, blue-veined marble; another variety, somewhat similar in appearance, but generally of a bluer hue, was obtained from Hymettus.

There is an obvious difficulty in assuming that Xlyvat, in the sense of " marshes," existed in this confined area, but stagnant pools may still be seen here in winter.

Not only had the friars great difficulty in supporting themselves, but they dreaded an outbreak from the fanatical Turks who resented some imprudent manifestations of Loyola's zeal.

As he could only support himself at Paris with difficulty, it was impossible to send for his companions in Salamanca.

He obtained, after difficulty, the official recognition of his Society from Paul III.