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Difficult vs Persnickety - What's the difference?

difficult | persnickety |

As adjectives the difference between difficult and persnickety

is that difficult is hard, not easy, requiring much effort while persnickety is (us) fastidious or fussy.

As a verb difficult

is (obsolete|transitive) to make difficult; to impede; to perplex.

difficult

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Hard, not easy, requiring much effort.
  • * (Nathaniel Hawthorne) (1804-1864)
    • There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, and difficult world, alone.
  • * 2008 , Daniel Goleman, Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama (ISBN 0307483762), page 199:
    • 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.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
    • , title= 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.
  • Hard to manage, uncooperative, troublesome.

    • 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 also

    Derived terms

    * difficultly

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (obsolete) To make difficult; to impede; to perplex.

    • Statistics

    *

    External links

    * * 1000 English basic words

    persnickety

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (US) Fastidious or fussy.
  • Obsessive about mundane details, demanding for precision.
  • *1905 , Katherine M. Yates, At the Door: A Tale to Read Both on the Lines and Between , K. M. Yates & Company, page 7:
  • *:Marjorie glanced up and down the long street. “Well, I never in my life saw so many different kinds of houses!” she exclaimed. “Aren’t they funny! Why, they look almost like people. Look at that little persnickety one over there — the white, white one with the green, green blinds — doesn’t it look exactly like —”
  • *1914 July 3, William H. Bowers, “The Use of ‘Tempest.’”, letter to the editor, in The Dial: A Semi-Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information , The Henry O. Shepard Co., volume LVII, page 47:
  • *:I have just read the article in your issue for May 16 on dialectic English. The word tempest recalls the surprise I felt at the beginning of three years' residence on Cape Cod to hear the word used commonly as an exact synonym for thunderstorm.
  • *:Persnickety'' I have been accustomed to use in the sense attached to ''perjinkety , that is, over-fastidious. I do not know how the word was acquired or how common its use is.
  • *1919 , Gertrude Harding, The Higher Aspect of Nursing , W. B. Saunders Company, pages 180–181:
  • *:Her free and easy association with her fellow nurses is prone to break down her womanly reserve and natural modesty. Her assiduity in clinging to ideals of modest begins to abate as a result. She is inclined to think she has been too “persnickety ;” that this is unnecessary when one understands “the naturalness of the physical body.” She wonders what is the use. And forthwith the foundation is laid for Moral Lenity .

    • Synonyms

    * See also