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Arduous vs Tenuous - What's the difference?

arduous | tenuous |

As adjectives the difference between arduous and tenuous

is that arduous is needing or using up much energy; testing powers of endurance while tenuous is thin in substance or consistency.

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

    * * *

    tenuous

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Thin in substance or consistency.
    • The aether was thought to be of tenuous strands.
  • insubstantial
    • His argument was not convincing in the debate, considering how tenuous it was.
  • * July 18 2012 , Scott Tobias, AV Club The Dark Knight Rises [http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-dark-knight-rises-review-batman,82624/]
    • Picking up eight years after The Dark Knight left off, the film finds Gotham enjoying a tenuous peace based on Harvey Dent’s moral ideals rather than the ugly truth of his demise.