difficult

Etymology

From Middle English difficult (ca. 1400), a back-formation from difficultee (whence modern difficulty), from Old French difficulté, from Latin difficultas, from difficul, older form of difficilis (“hard to do, difficult”), from dis- + facilis (“easy”); see difficile. Replaced native Middle English earveþ (“difficult, hard”), from Old English earfoþe (“difficult, laborious, full of hardship”), cognate to German Arbeit (“work”).

adj

1. Hard, not easy, requiring much effort.
   However, the difficult weather conditions will ensure Yunnan has plenty of freshwater. File:However, the difficult weather conditions will ensure Yunnan has plenty of freshwater.ogg
   In adults, the same kind of anger has been studied in people trying to solve a very difficult math problem. Though the tough math problem is very frustrating, there is an active attempt to solve the problem and meet the goal. 2008, Daniel Goleman, Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama, page 199
   Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too.[…]But as a foundation for analysis it is highly subjective: it rests on difficult decisions about what counts as a territory, what counts as output and how to value it. Indeed, economists are still tweaking it. 2013-08-03, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847
2. (often of a person, or a horse, etc) Hard to manage, uncooperative, troublesome.
   Stop being difficult and eat your broccoli—you know it's good for you.
3. (obsolete) Unable or unwilling.
   “I hope, madam,” said Jones, “my charming Lady Bellaston will be as difficult to believe anything against one who is so sensible of the many obligations she hath conferred upon him.” 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

verb

1. (obsolete, transitive) To make difficult; to impede; to perplex.
   August 9 1678, William Temple, letter to Joseph Williamson their Excellencies having desisted from their pretensions , which had difficulted the peace