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difficulty

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈdɪf.ɪ.kəl.ti/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Anglo-Norman difficulté, Old French difficulté, and directly borrowed from Latin difficultās (“difficulty, distress, poverty”) (accusative difficultatem),[2][3][4] from difficilis (“hard”),[2][3] from dis- “not, away from” (see dis-) and facilis “easy to do” (see facile),[2][3] from facere “to do”, from the PIE root Proto-Indo-European *dhe- (“to set, put”).[2] MWU and the NODE note the influence of facultās (“ability”) (see faculty) on the form.[5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The quality of being hard to do or understand: 1380, in Chaucer's translation of Boethius, in Barnhart; 1382 in the OED.[3][7] Something hard to understand, a perplexing point, is from about 1385.[7]

Semantic evolution

Reluctance or objection, as in to make a difficulty, is from 1513,[7] and obscurity of meaning from 1529.[7] A thing hard to do or overcome is from the 1610s, before 1619 in the OED,[2][7] and an embarrassment of affairs, especially of money, from 1705.[7] Difficult is a back-formation from difficulty, before 1400.[3] In north Lincolnshire a difficulty was a quarrel.[8]

Timeline

  • 1380 – the quality of being hard, in Chaucer.[3]
  • c. 1385 – a perplexing point.[7]
  • before 1400 – difficult.[3]
  • 1513 – objection, reluctance.[7]
  • 1610s – a thing that is hard to do.[2]
  • 1705 – an embarrassment of affairs.[7]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. The quality of being hard to do, deal with or understand.
  2. Something hard to do, solve or overcome; an obstacle.
  3. (often plural) A troublesome situation, especially a financial one.
  4. A disagreement or objection.

Usage notes

The AHD groups difficulty with hardship, rigor and vicissitude, all meaning something that takes great effort to overcome.[9]

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  4. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  8. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  9. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin