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Arduous vs Painstaking - What's the difference?

arduous | painstaking |

As adjectives the difference between arduous and painstaking

is that arduous is needing or using up much energy; testing powers of endurance while painstaking is carefully attentive to details; diligent in performing a process or procedure.

As a noun painstaking is

the application of careful and attentive effort.

arduous

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Needing or using up much energy; testing powers of endurance.
    • The movement towards a peaceful settlement has been a long and arduous political struggle.
  • * {{quote-news, year=2012
    • , date=May 5 , author=Phil McNulty , title=Chelsea 2-1 Liverpool , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=Chelsea survived and can now turn their attentions to the Champions League final against Bayern Munich in Germany later this month as they face an increasingly arduous task to finish in the Premier League's top four.}}
  • (obsolete) burning; ardent
    • Where flames the arduous Spirit of Isidore. — Cary.
  • (rft-sense) Difficult or exhausting to traverse.
  • * 1974 , Sue Bowder, The American biking atlas & touring guide , page 77:
    • Beyond the river, an arduous slope rises 3286 feet in 13 miles.
  • * 1999 , Scott Ciencin, Mike Fredericks, Dinoverse :
    • Mike looked up from the arduous mountain trail. They'd been climbing for five hours and he was beginning to feel irritable.
  • * 2006 , Jack W. Plunkett, Plunkett's Entertainment & Media Industry Almanac 2006 :
    • Survivor reaches as many as 28 million viewers who watch contestants win a new Pontiac or guzzle Mountain Dew after scaling an arduous cliff.

    Quotations

    (English Citations of "arduous")

    Synonyms

    * burdensome * demanding * exhausting * fatiguing * laborious * onerous * strenuous * wearisome

    External links

    * * *

    painstaking

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Carefully attentive to details; diligent in performing a process or procedure.
  • * Harris
    • All these painstaking men, considered together, may be said to have completed another species of criticism.

    Synonyms

    * See also * See also

    Derived terms

    * painstakingly, painstakingness

    Noun

  • The application of careful and attentive effort.
  • *, II.10:
  • *:I esteeme Bocace'' his ''Decameron'', ''Rabelais'', and the kisses of ''John the second (if they may be placed under this title) worth the paines-taking to reade them.
  • * (Thomas Chalmers)
    • It is not by a flight of imagination that you gain the ascents of spiritual experience. It is by the toils and the watchings and the painstakings of a solid obedience.
  • * (Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham)
    • Behold what an abundant recompense attends the small processes of the earth, with the help of a little warm air; and what wealthy returns the industry of the husbandman and the florist is preparing from a few seeds and painstakings .