Adjective

(er)

Dimly lit, as at dusk (evening).

I like it when it is dusky , just before the street lights come on.

* {{quote-book, year=1907, author=

, title=The Dust of Conflict , chapter=1 citation , passage=A beech wood with silver firs in it rolled down the face of the hill, and the maze of leafless twigs and dusky spires cut sharp against the soft blueness of the evening sky.}}

A shade of color that is rather dark.

The dusky rose was of a muted color, not clashing with any of the other colors.

(dated) dark-skinned

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:* In the raw attempt to apply the perfected institutions of Anglo-Saxon civilization to the descendants of the dusky races which inhabited Mexico before the discovery of America by Columbus, the Mexican statesmen of 1824 put the principles of democratic government to a terrible ordeal.

ashen, greyish skin coloration

This man in shock has a silver colored dusky skin tone.

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.