Difficult vs Tough - What's the difference?
difficult | tough |
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.
Strong and resilient; sturdy.
(of food) Difficult to cut or chew.
Rugged or physically hardy.
Stubborn.
(of weather etc) Harsh or severe.
Rowdy or rough.
Difficult or demanding.
(material science) Undergoing plastic deformation before breaking.
(slang) (Used to indicate lack of sympathy)
A person who obtains things by force; a thug or bully.
Tough is a synonym of difficult.
As adjectives the difference between difficult and tough
is that difficult is hard, not easy, requiring much effort while tough is strong and resilient; sturdy.As verbs the difference between difficult and tough
is that difficult is to make difficult; to impede; to perplex while tough is to endure.As an interjection tough is
Used to indicate lack of sympathyAs a noun tough is
a person who obtains things by force; a thug or bully.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 wordstough
English
Adjective
(er)- The tent, made of tough canvas, held up to many abuses.
- To soften a tough cut of meat, the recipe suggested simmering it for hours.
- Only a tough species will survive in the desert.
- He had a reputation as a tough negotiator.
- A bunch of the tough boys from the wrong side of the tracks threatened him.
- This is a tough crowd.
Derived terms
* do it tough * hang tough * supertough * tough call * tough case * tough cookie * tough crowd * tough love * tough luck * tough-minded * tough nut to crack * tough row to hoe * tough shit * tough titty * tough toodles * tough tuchus * toughen * toughie * toughish * toughly * toughness * toughy * ultratough *Interjection
(en interjection)- If you don't like it, tough !
Noun
(en noun)- They were doing fine until they encountered a bunch of toughs from the opposition.