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difficultness

difficultness

7.0
How hard something is to do, deal with, or understand
  • noun
  • /ˈdɪfɪkəlt.nəs/
translation icon : dificultad
  • The difficultness of the exam surprised all the students.

Examples

  • Among girls, maternal hostile child-rearing attitudes, role dissatisfaction, and perceived temperamental difficultness of the child were all significant predictors of self-esteem in adolescence.

    Academic text (2003)
  • High activity and low sociability are less accepted in girls than in boys (Block, 1983), and this may explain why temperamental difficultness predicted low self-esteem among girls only.

    Academic text (2003)
  • She seems to relish her difficultness, much like a small child.

    Fiction book (2000)
  • Children often face difficultness when trying to understand complex math problems.

  • She described the difficultness of learning a new language as frustrating but rewarding.

Synonyms

difficulty
vsdifficultness
651 2.4

A hard part of a task that needs extra effort or is not easy to understand

is the less common variant of that same noun
toughness
vsdifficultness
14 3.5

A situation or task that is hard to deal with

focuses on general difficulty rather than the focus on resilience
trickiness
vsdifficultness
1 5.4

Being difficult to deal with and needing skill or care

means being hard broadly rather than specifically needing skill or caution
hardness
vsdifficultness
5.3

How difficult something is to do or understand

is the broader general idea of being hard rather than this specific quality
arduousness
vsdifficultness
8.5

A lot of hard work needed to do a task

is about being hard in any way rather than demanding long effort
complicatedness
vsdifficultness
7.0

The state of having many connected parts that are hard to understand

is general hardship rather than complexity of many parts
knottiness
vsdifficultness
9.4

A quality that makes something hard to understand or solve

is general hardness rather than this intense tangled complexity
abstrusity
vsdifficultness
  • Formal
9.9

The quality of being very difficult to understand because it is complex

covers being hard in general not only deep intellectual obscurity
impalpability
vsdifficultness
9.9

You cannot easily understand or picture it in your mind

refers to being hard but not necessarily impossible to mentally grasp
onerousness
vsdifficultness
  • Formal
9.9

A state of being very hard and unpleasant to deal with

is about general hardness rather than the added sense of burden
burdensomeness
vsdifficultness
8.3

A quality that makes something difficult or causes extra work

covers being hard rather than specifically causing extra hardship
intractableness
vsdifficultness
9.9

The quality of being very difficult to manage or control

refers to being hard in general rather than being unmanageable

Antonyms

304 1.0

A state of comfort and freedom from worry

How Difficult

impossibility
37 5.3
hardship
128 3.4
difficultness
7.0
challenge
3.1
hassle
89 4.5
ease
304 1.0

Surface Forms

difficultness singular

Morphology

difficultness = difficult (transparent) = difficult + ness

Formed by the adjective 'difficult' plus the productive noun-forming suffix '-ness', yielding the state or quality of being difficult.

Etymology

Difficultness comes from the adjective difficult, which itself uses the parts dis- meaning 'not' and facilis meaning 'easy'. So, difficultness simply means the state of being 'not easy' — in other words, how hard something is or how much trouble it gives you.