Difficult vs Attempt - What's the difference?
difficult | attempt |
Hard, not easy, requiring much effort.
* (Nathaniel Hawthorne) (1804-1864)
* 2008 , Daniel Goleman, Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama (ISBN 0307483762), page 199:
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= Hard to manage, uncooperative, troublesome.
To try.
* Longfellow
* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author=
, title= (obsolete) To try to move, by entreaty, by afflictions, or by temptations; to tempt.
* Thackeray
(archaic) To try to win, subdue, or overcome.
* Shakespeare
(archaic) To attack; to make an effort or attack upon; to try to take by force.
* Motley
The action of trying at something.
* We made an attempt to cross the stream, but didn't manage.
* This poem is much better than the feeble attempt of mine.
* It was worth the attempt .
* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-03
, author=William E. Carter, Merri Sue Carter
, title=The British Longitude Act Reconsidered
, volume=100, issue=2, page=87
, magazine=
An assault or attack, especially an assassination attempt.
* 1584' ''No man can charge us of any '''attempt against the realm. (Allen's Defence Of English Catholics, cited after Edinburgh review 1883, p. 378)
As verbs the difference between difficult and attempt
is that difficult is (obsolete|transitive) to make difficult; to impede; to perplex while attempt is to try.As an adjective difficult
is hard, not easy, requiring much effort.As a noun attempt is
the action of trying at something.difficult
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, and difficult world, alone.
- In adults, the same kind of anger has been studied in people trying to solve a very difficult math problem. Though the tough math problem is very frustrating, there is an active attempt to solve the problem and meet the goal.
Boundary problems, passage=Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too.
Usage notes
Difficult'' implies that considerable mental effort or physical skill is required, or that obstacles are to be overcome which call for sagacity and skill in the doer; as, a ''difficult'' task. Thus, "hard" is not always synonymous with difficult: Other examples include ''a ''difficult'' operation in surgery'' and ''a ''difficult'' passage by an author (that is, a passage which is hard to understand).Synonyms
* burdensome, cumbersome, hard * see alsoDerived terms
* difficultlyStatistics
*External links
* * 1000 English basic wordsattempt
English
Verb
(en verb)- I attempted to sing, but my throat was too hoarse.
- to attempt an escape from prison
- Something attempted , something done, / Has earned a night's repose.
Sarah Glaz
Ode to Prime Numbers, volume=101, issue=4, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Some poems, echoing the purpose of early poetic treatises on scientific principles, attempt to elucidate the mathematical concepts that underlie prime numbers. Others play with primes’ cultural associations. Still others derive their structure from mathematical patterns involving primes.}}
- It made the laughter of an afternoon / That Vivien should attempt the blameless king.
- one who attempts the virtue of a woman
- Dear sir, of force I must attempt you further: / Take some remembrance of us, as a tribute.
- to attempt the enemy's camp
- without attempting his adversary's life
Usage notes
* This is a catenative verb that takes the to infinitive . SeeSynonyms
* take a stab at, take a run atNoun
(en noun)citation, passage=But was it responsible governance to pass the Longitude Act without other efforts to protect British seamen? Or might it have been subterfuge—a disingenuous attempt to shift attention away from the realities of their life at sea}}
