Crossword clues for difficulty
difficulty
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
difficulty
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a hearing problem/difficulty/impairment
▪ a special telephone for people with hearing problems
added difficulty/problem etc
▪ Our yard is only small, and has the added disadvantage of facing north.
▪ It may not be necessary to go to the added expense of updating your anti-virus software.
anticipate problems/difficulties
▪ We don’t anticipate any problems.
attendant problems/difficulties/dangers etc
▪ nuclear power, with all its attendant risks
compound a problem/difficulty etc
▪ Helmut’s problems were compounded by his lack of concentration.
encounter problems/difficulties
▪ They encountered serious problems when two members of the expedition were injured.
experience problems/difficulties
▪ Many old people will experience problems as the result of retirement.
face a difficulty
▪ The hotel’s owners were facing financial difficulties.
financial difficulties/problems/crisis
have trouble/difficulty breathing
▪ In high altitudes some people have trouble breathing.
learning difficulties
▪ a school for children with learning difficulties
pose difficulties
▪ Physical education and games pose difficulties for short-sighted children.
practical problems/difficulties
▪ The local Social Services Department may be able to help with practical problems.
present difficulties
▪ Juggling work and family responsibilities presents difficulties for women.
run into trouble/problems/difficulties
▪ The business ran into financial difficulties almost immediately.
severe problems/difficulties
▪ The clothing industry has experienced severe problems in recent years.
solve sb's difficulties
▪ You can't solve your difficulties by running away.
unforeseen problems/difficulties/delays
▪ unforeseen delays in supplying the equipment
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
considerable
▪ Disability and age While the vast majority of older people are able to live independently, significant minorities experience considerable difficulties.
▪ However, there are considerable difficulties associated with assessment for selection.
▪ When the need for assistance is not even recognised, there is considerable difficulty for any advice agency in providing assistance.
▪ She wrote straightway to Ellen, though not without considerable difficulty.
▪ With considerable difficulty, Kirov managed to hoist the photographer to his feet, supporting his dead-weight by his arm-pits.
▪ The incremental approach is often appropriate for any child with considerable learning difficulties.
▪ She documents the considerable difficulties involved for researchers in approaching bereaved families and countering the disapproval of many outside agencies.
economic
▪ Under Mrs Thatcher, it at last appeared that our chronic industrial and economic difficulties were being surmounted.
▪ The extreme social and economic difficulties they faced on independence meant that the emergence of recognizably democratic party politics was by no means certain.
▪ The Labour Government was haunted constantly by economic difficulties, largely caused by an adverse balance of payments.
▪ But some of the country's economic difficulties have direct and indirect effects on provision.
▪ John Barons, chief executive of the owners, Century Newspapers, blamed economic difficulties.
▪ Gallup has asked ever since 1964 which party voters think could handle Britain's economic difficulties best.
▪ The immediate effects of changing the system has been characterised by economic difficulties in the new federal states.
▪ There may be all sorts of social and economic difficulties affecting the family of which the school is unaware.
financial
▪ Death and financial difficulties finally finished off the business around 1809.
▪ Income growth then will slow, companies will have less cash to buy back their stock and some will face financial difficulty.
▪ The firm's been in financial difficulties and moved out of its premises in the Brunel Centre last month.
▪ All the same, most of us feel that we have financial difficulties.
▪ He claimed she had been in severe financial difficulties at the time.
▪ But he quashed rumours that the Red Fort had been quietly put up for sale due to his financial difficulties.
▪ But its financial difficulties have deterred potential investors.
▪ The patient who was self-employed with his own business before his illness may have much greater financial difficulties than the employed worker.
fraught
▪ I see now that the simplest reconstruction is fraught with difficulty.
▪ One answer in the report is fraught with difficulty: to put an economic value on water.
▪ But it is also one that could be fraught with difficulty.
▪ The changes in health that have taken place in El Salvador have inevitably been uneven, fraught with difficulties and contradictions.
▪ Their ten years of marriage have been fraught with difficulties that neither could have foreseen.
▪ But even the comparatively simple task of head-counting is fraught with difficulties.
▪ It is this lack of codified certainty that makes a study of it so fraught with difficulty.
▪ This is fraught with logistical difficulties for the purchaser.
great
▪ Yet a great difficulty, if not a scandal remains.
▪ Even greater difficulties follow from the way in which Marx identifies production with human essence.
▪ The War drained men from many schools which then experienced great difficulty in maintaining staffing levels.
▪ Deborah believed that this outlook came from his fa-ther; she knew that Tom had great difficulty facing these emotions.
▪ The umpire, who was having great difficulty controlling his dapple-grey pony, hurled the ball in.
▪ It was only with the greatest of difficulty that the League could be persuaded to do its job in Danzig.
▪ Where that popular base does not exist such laws are only imposed on the population with great difficulty, if at all.
▪ It is often the person facing the greatest difficulties who is capable of feeling joy in life.
little
▪ I have had a little difficulty with it.
▪ Similarly the Dun &038; Bradstreet performance quality breakthrough teams had little difficulty identifying specific six-to-eight-week objectives.
▪ The puppy will then settle in with relatively little difficulty as a member of the family.
▪ She had little difficulty in learning when the men planned to depart and where they would stay.
▪ Most students have very little difficulty in learning how to make satisfactory launches.
▪ The ancient pattern of the Sanctus can be maintained in our culture with little difficulty.
▪ They then experienced little difficulty in deciding of what private morality consisted.
▪ He had a little bit of difficulty with reproducing the shapes.
major
▪ People lacking supportive relationships were expected to be prone to depression whether or not they experienced major difficulties or threatening events.
▪ The major difficulty is what to do with it once it has been read, analyzed, shredded, and burn-bagged.
▪ Given this, determining the nature of the interactions between the variables becomes a matter of major difficulty.
▪ The major difficulties are overcrowding, lack of books and materials, and low teacher morale.
▪ The major difficulty with this contract-based approach is the doctrine of privity of contract.
▪ One of the major factors creating difficulties in obtaining information is randomness in the external environment facing the firm.
▪ The major difficulty with comparing solar panels is that manufacturers' output figures can not be compared.
▪ A major difficulty arises when fossil species disappear for good as the physical environment, over millions of years, inevitably changes.
particular
▪ The way these responsibilities were divided presented particular difficulties in work on integration.
▪ In this way they may indicate a preference as to which particular difficulty will be addressed first.
▪ A particular difficulty about task synthesis is that there is no easy way of confirming completeness.
▪ Therefore, no particular difficulty arises.
▪ We will continue to finance training programmes for the long-term unemployed and those who face particular difficulties.
▪ This was considered generally impractical and in view of the particular difficulties of carrying out social research in Belfast, probably unattainable.
▪ It was in this particular field of difficulty that Balanchine sometimes showed his deep understanding.
▪ So far, this phenomenon does not seem to raise particular difficulties in cloning.
practical
▪ But such practical difficulties can easily be overstated.
▪ It is a murky field at best, and the practical difficulties in the Viet-namese environment were daunting.
▪ It also raised serious practical difficulties.
▪ The practical difficulty, of course, is to ensure that a partner agrees to a dormant status.
▪ In addition to these practical difficulties, there are more principled objections.
▪ However, it represents a number of practical operating difficulties, mainly because the process converts material rather than destroys it.
▪ Equally, one needs to be clear on the nature of the practical difficulties associated with computer-aided text-processing.
▪ There are practical difficulties with parallel computers.
present
▪ These two factors together mean that the fundamentals of the metric system present difficulties to them.
▪ These special categories, forming a substantial part of the collection, present special difficulties because of their age, condition and value.
▪ The present difficulties stem from the recession and the collapse of the housing market.
▪ He talked of the future; he made light of the present and its difficulties until Lucy lost sight of them too.
▪ Ask yourself again if there are any contact points between the hurts or wrongs of the past and your present difficulties.
▪ It is this contract, which Mr Morton inherited when he joined Eurotunnel, that lies at the heart of present difficulties.
▪ Categories 1 and 3 present relatively few difficulties.
▪ But the methods present severe difficulties for a feminist psychology.
real
▪ The real difficulty is surely whether scio raises a trust at all.
▪ They tried to move away, but they had real emotional difficulties doing that.
▪ If there is a real difficulty, get in touch with some one from their local community to see if they can provide an interpreter.
▪ Time is required, often to summon the courage necessary to talk about their real problems and difficulties.
▪ Herein, I think, lies the real difficulty about wooden aeroplanes.
▪ Likewise the identification of the 500-akce kadiliks mentioned in the Kanunname presents a real difficulty.
▪ Anyway, carry on and let me know if there are any real difficulties.
▪ It is no denigration of his immense achievement to point to these real difficulties which it raises.
serious
▪ It also raised serious practical difficulties.
▪ There are, as far as l can see, other very serious difficulties with the strong-Al point of view.
▪ This reply sounds very plausible, until one reflects on it; and then a serious difficulty emerges.
▪ Widespread speculation is that several others are enduring serious financial difficulty and may eventually fold or merge with more successful companies.
▪ However, even by the end of the war, the design had run into serious difficulties.
▪ But it also raises serious difficulties.
▪ Authors can also encounter some more serious difficulties.
▪ However, the Locksfields firm was not without serious difficulties.
severe
▪ They each have grown up sons with severe learning difficulties and need to be at home.
▪ But he was beset by severe economic difficulties.
▪ To these young men, this is their own very special pub because they all have severe learning difficulties.
▪ The only B.Ed for children with severe learning difficulties had 20-29 hours of compulsory language work.
▪ People with disabilities also experience severe difficulties in both training and the labour market.
▪ Both the above quotations refer to severe learning difficulties but of course severe is a term open to varying interpretations.
▪ In general, the staff/student ratio is rarely as good as in a school for children and young people with severe learning difficulties.
▪ He claimed she had been in severe financial difficulties at the time.
technical
▪ Then the runners arrive and the sustained technical difficulty takes over the interest.
▪ There were a number of technical difficulties with the vote count.
▪ Are there technical difficulties which would bother any members of the group - things like scrambling sections or exposed ridges?
▪ The technical difficulty in bringing the changes to fruition says something about how dramatic they are.
▪ However, increased use is being seriously inhibited by technical and conceptual difficulties.
▪ We've had a few technical difficulties with the computer, or rather our printer has had trouble with it.
▪ However, the interdependence of hardware and software poses formidable technical difficulties to running programs so transferred.
■ NOUN
learning
▪ Ward will also continue to oversee some learning difficulties projects supported by the foundation.
▪ Both the above quotations refer to severe learning difficulties but of course severe is a term open to varying interpretations.
▪ No one would deny that the origins of some learning difficulties do lie in the child.
▪ Andrew, who has learning difficulties, is a keen violinist and has earned a place in Banks Brass Band.
▪ But in this case the people with the learning difficulties are his colleagues in social services.
▪ In general it seems that the greater the learning difficulties, the more didactic is the approach and the more controlling the relationship.
▪ They families say that people with severe learning difficulties do not adapt well to sudden changes of environment.
▪ Is it possible that some learning difficulties arise from the ways in which schools are organised and managed?
■ VERB
arise
▪ This shifted the conceptual focus away from needs as defined in relation to the child's handicap towards educational needs arising from learning difficulties.
▪ In fact many of the severe events arose out of long-term difficulties.
▪ This specification problem arises because of the difficulties, discussed above, in constructing a price variable for an activity.
▪ A number of issues arose that emphasised the difficulties that safety committees encounter because of the absence of trade union representation.
cause
▪ Such divisions of opinion were causing difficulties in the functioning of local medical committees.
▪ At that time, my wife and I were also splitting up and it just caused some financial difficulties.
▪ This may cause difficulty where the audience were annoyed or distressed by what the defendant was doing.
▪ But subjects that are more abstract, such as scientific concepts or math, may cause them difficulties.
▪ If the husband's name remained there, this could cause difficulties in respect of any claim as his receipt might be required.
▪ The main factor for a road is public access, but where to draw the line causes difficulty.
▪ It was still possible, however, for the issue of civil immunity to cause difficulties.
▪ This can cause difficulties if wrong assumptions are drawn as to the potential of the new body.
compound
▪ She felt a bit like some one caught in quicksand, whose every turn only succeeded in further compounding the difficulties.
▪ But Brandeis' status as a hybrid of an elite liberal arts college and a small research university compounds its difficulty.
▪ These shortcomings are clearly compounded by the difficulty of creating new titles.
▪ Paradoxically, the relative unimportance of money in Soviet society compounds these difficulties.
▪ To compound the difficulties, the track itself is a figure-of-eight, with a dizzying number of twists and turns.
▪ A serious decline of leadership in local affairs compounds the difficulty.
▪ Although these task demands can be identified, they may interact or compound the difficulty in particular tables.
▪ Their effect was to compound the difficulty the liberal leadership had in bringing pressure for reform to bear upon the regime.
create
▪ A pedagogy which denies this perversely creates difficulties which hamper the learner in this task.
▪ So the vicious cycle continues: we create daughters who have difficulty articulating their own needs and perceptions.
▪ It has also created difficulties in furthering their cause effectively-be it in the courts or through bureaucratic channels.
▪ One of the major factors creating difficulties in obtaining information is randomness in the external environment facing the firm.
▪ Obviously this creates difficulties when staff wish to arrange extra-curricular activities.
▪ While war could create serious difficulties for the merchant class, other social groups looked at it in a different light.
▪ Fortunately these approaches create difficulties for the faker and also leave clues for the scientific investigator.
▪ When the two subsections are juxtaposed, however, they seem to create a difficulty.
encounter
▪ Yet, by viewing history in this manner Kemp encounters an historiographical difficulty that he never satisfactorily resolves.
▪ In their research, all found that new managers encountered special difficulties in working with more-experienced subordinates. 5.
▪ Whitehall officials have encountered difficulties in deciding which essential services to include.
▪ As a school-age child, she encounters difficulties comprehending instructions.
▪ If they buy on credit are they likely to encounter difficulties in repaying the loan?
▪ Constantly he creates situations for which he can find no earthly solution and his characters encounter difficulties beyond their means to control.
▪ Authors can also encounter some more serious difficulties.
▪ Problems of Status and Structure Volunteers who immediately assumed their permanent assignments also encountered difficulties.
experience
▪ Instead they will expand currency swap facilities to bolster economies experiencing payment difficulties.
▪ You may experience sleep difficulties caused by pain associated with surgery or other medical conditions such as arthritis.
▪ Disability and age While the vast majority of older people are able to live independently, significant minorities experience considerable difficulties.
▪ People lacking supportive relationships were expected to be prone to depression whether or not they experienced major difficulties or threatening events.
▪ Pupils with impaired vision Pupils with impaired vision will obviously experience difficulty with reading.
▪ In the survey mentioned above, the health sector was second only to mechanical engineering in the proportion of employers experiencing difficulties.
▪ Unfortunately Carrera have been experiencing financial difficulties and ceased trading.
▪ Even couples who already have children can experience difficulty in conceiving again.
face
▪ Now her family is setting up a charity to help children facing similar difficulties.
▪ Still, catalog companies have faced many similar difficulties and still built a thriving, multibillion-dollar industry.
▪ This much is perhaps to be expected from some one who faced insurmountable difficulties in coping with the work.
▪ In adapting to this expanded role the auditor faces many difficulties.
▪ Attractive though this approach is, it faces difficulties.
▪ Better still, talk to other postgraduates who may have faced similar difficulties.
▪ Yet students who have completed expensive training face the same difficulties as an untrained actor in qualifying for an Equity card.
▪ We will continue to finance training programmes for the long-term unemployed and those who face particular difficulties.
find
▪ It seems clear that she found some difficulty in arriving at an assessment of her feelings in relation to me.
▪ Switching off the lights, she found her way without difficulty in the darkness to the bed.
▪ I find much more difficulty with the second proposition advanced by Mr. Collins.
▪ Those who found difficulty in settling at Bunce Court had to sort out their own problems.
▪ She found the place without difficulty.
▪ Squids are so intelligent and swift-moving that they must find little difficulty in avoiding man's clumsy deep-sea dredges.
▪ The boats can be viewed from the Quay but disabled visitors may find difficulty boarding them.
▪ Those who accept the general orientation of modern science may well find considerable difficulty in coming to grips with this main point.
learn
▪ During the 1960s, class numbers dropped sharply and concern for children with learning difficulties began to increase.
▪ Gateway helps people with learning difficulties, particularly the mentally handicapped.
▪ The question of how to empower those people marginalised through disabilities and learning difficulties is, thus, a central one.
▪ When the scientists came to our school all the children were coming up with ideas, even those with learning difficulties.
▪ For a young person with a disability or learning difficulty this transition is crucial.
▪ Is it primarily a handbook for managers or a review of developments in services for people with learning difficulties?
▪ I would be interested to hear from anyone who has developed other means of communicating with people with learning difficulties.
overcome
▪ During this year my father too succeeded in overcoming his difficulties with the language and with his new pupils.
▪ Only great eagerness to learn, on the part of the people, will make it possible to overcome immense difficulties here.
▪ This did not deter this student from persisting with different approaches to overcome difficulties.
▪ So a search began for ways of overcoming the difficulty.
▪ To overcome these difficulties, kings made increasing use of money.
▪ Only those strategies used to overcome difficulties arising from gender distinctions will be commented on.
▪ Modifications of a theory in an attempt to overcome a difficulty need not be adhoc.
run
▪ Inevitably, the proposal is running into difficulties.
▪ And with the theatre running into difficulties about subsidy it's not getting any more hopeful.
▪ It was built successfully but two attempts to emulate and balance it soon ran into difficulties.
▪ However, even by the end of the war, the design had run into serious difficulties.
▪ They therefore do not run into this difficulty.
▪ But delegates ran into difficulties in informal haggling over how to share the cuts.
▪ But here we run up against the difficulty that this formulation appears to derive a prescriptive conclusion from two factual premisses.
▪ If you do run into difficulties, there are two possibilities; neither of which is desirable. 1.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
fraught with problems/difficulties/danger etc
▪ Attractive as that proposition has seemed in recent years, the form in which it has been pursued is fraught with difficulties.
▪ For this whole business of killing, whether killing beasts or killing men, is supposed to be fraught with danger.
▪ He realized that what he was about to attempt was fraught with dangers, for Bernice and for himself.
▪ However, it is a move fraught with problems as our writers explain How long can it be taken as read?
▪ She had had a husband and lovers older than herself, and each affair had been fraught with problems.
▪ There are a number of tortured perspectives on how to get round this problem, but they are themselves fraught with problems.
▪ Thompson and Geir can agree, but their own deliverance was fraught with danger.
spare sb the trouble/difficulty/pain etc (of doing sth)
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Credit cards make it extremely easy to get into difficulty with debt.
▪ I don't expect major difficulties, although there are still differences to be worked out.
▪ Manchester United won easily, and never seemed to be in any difficulty.
▪ Police officers in most Californian cities need to be able to cope with language difficulties and cultural differences.
▪ Some parents experienced difficulty when they tried to move their children to other schools.
▪ The difficulties of counting whales makes most population figures extremely unreliable.
▪ The books vary in level of difficulty.
▪ The main difficulty with this method is that it takes twice as long.
▪ The nation faces severe economic difficulties.
▪ Youngsters may have difficulty applying the paint because of its thin consistency.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Freddie is having difficulties, too.
▪ She lent me a couple of hundred quid because I was in financial difficulty.
▪ The difficulties of experimentation in this area are well known.
▪ The traditional way of undertaking market research is through using questionnaires but there are difficulties in gathering information by this method.
▪ This step should ensure that the difficulty level and the volume of material in any one session are right for the students.
▪ Whitehall officials have encountered difficulties in deciding which essential services to include.
▪ Work-inhibited children often have difficulty engaging in competitive play.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Difficulty
Difficulty \Dif"fi*cul*ty\, n.; pl. Difficulties. [L. difficultas, fr. difficilis difficult; dif- = dis- + facilis easy: cf. F. difficult['e]. See Facile.]
-
The state of being difficult, or hard to do; hardness; arduousness; -- opposed to easiness or facility; as, the difficulty of a task or enterprise; a work of difficulty.
Not being able to promote them [the interests of life] on account of the difficulty of the region.
--James Byrne. -
Something difficult; a thing hard to do or to understand; that which occasions labor or perplexity, and requires skill and perseverance to overcome, solve, or achieve; a hard enterprise; an obstacle; an impediment; as, the difficulties of a science; difficulties in theology.
They lie under some difficulties by reason of the emperor's displeasure.
--Addison. -
A controversy; a falling out; a disagreement; an objection; a cavil.
Measures for terminating all local difficulties.
--Bancroft. -
Embarrassment of affairs, especially financial affairs; -- usually in the plural; as, to be in difficulties.
In days of difficulty and pressure.
--Tennyson.Syn: Impediment; obstacle; obstruction; embarrassment; perplexity; exigency; distress; trouble; trial; objection; cavil. See Impediment.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
difficulty
n. 1 The state of being difficult, or hard to do. 2 An obstacle that hinders achievement of a goal.
WordNet
difficulty
n. an effort that is inconvenient; "I went to a lot of trouble"; "he won without any trouble"; "had difficulty walking"; "finished the test only with great difficulty" [syn: trouble]
a factor causing trouble in achieving a positive result or tending to produce a negative result; "serious difficulties were encountered in obtaining a pure reagent"
a condition or state of affairs almost beyond one's ability to deal with and requiring great effort to bear or overcome; "grappling with financial difficulties"
the quality of being difficult; "they agreed about the difficulty of the climb" [syn: difficultness] [ant: ease]
Wikipedia
Difficulty
Difficulty or Difficult may refer to:
- A problem
- Degree of difficulty, in sport and gaming
- Counter-majoritarian difficulty, in legal theory
- Difficult, Tennessee, a community in the United States
- "Difficult" (song), by Uffie
- Hill Difficulty, a fictional place in the 1678 Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress
Usage examples of "difficulty".
Close to the battle, he had as much difficulty making himself heard as those aboard Endymion.
The seven American generals had their problems, too, but each had a bevy of subalterns to solve them, while French and English businessmen encountered much difficulty in acquiring even basic necessities.
At first Mr Passant, the post-master, made some difficulties but at last he consented and to my surprise he handed me, in addition to a letter for my mother, one addressed to Bissett.
Not but that the duke of Queensberry at one time despaired of succeeding, and being in continual apprehension for his life, expressed a desire of adjourning the parliament, until by time and good management he should be able to remove those difficulties that then seemed to be insurmountable.
The relief of the stricture by our new and painless method was followed by very great improvement in his condition, after which appropriate remedies for the rheumatism were administered, and the result was a very gratifying and satisfactory relief from his difficulty.
As santonin is almost entirely tasteless, if not combined with other medicines which are unpalatable, no difficulty will be experienced in administering it to children.
A long siege and an artful negotiation, admonished the king of the Franks of the danger and difficulty of his enterprise.
I have never seen this adventurer without his being in a desperate state of impecuniosity, but he would never learn to abate his luxurious habits, and always managed to find some way or other out of his difficulties.
It causes tickling and frequent desire to clear the throat, change, weakness, or entire loss of voice, and difficulty of breathing, frequently giving rise to the most persistent and aggravating cough.
But She gave him not the slightest inkling of the difficulties he might face, hinting only that, as with the test of his faithfulness to ahimsa, part of the test would be his ability to discover the true nature of the test and why he was being tested.
The difficulty of procuring provisions was extreme, and the means he was compelled to employ for that purpose greatly heightened the evil, at the same time insubordination and want of discipline prevailed to such an alarming degree that it would be as difficult as painful to depict the situation of our army at this period, Marmont, by his steady conduct, fortunately succeeded in correcting the disorders which prevailed, and very soon found himself at the head of a well-organised army, amounting to 30,000 infantry, with forty pieces of artillery, but he had only a very small body of cavalry, and those ill-mounted.
Sir Amias Paulet, and reduced to a more rigorous confinement, he experienced so much difficulty and danger in rendering her this service, that he had desisted from every attempt of that nature.
I was not really amorous of her, I had no difficulty in playing the part of the timid lover.
If there was one difficulty about being a patrician of the Julii Caesares, it was that all his seniors to date were only too aware how much greater and more august his ancestry was than theirs.
The ancipital race, to which we can ascribe many of our human difficulties over the ages, is not a race of new invaders, like the Driats.