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Suffer vs Difficult - What's the difference?

suffer | difficult |

As verbs the difference between suffer and difficult

is that suffer is to undergo hardship while difficult is (obsolete|transitive) to make difficult; to impede; to perplex.

As an adjective difficult is

hard, not easy, requiring much effort.

suffer

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • To undergo hardship.
  • To feel pain.
  • To have a disease or condition.
  • To become worse.
  • To endure, undergo.
  • * Shakespeare
  • If your more ponderous and settled project / May suffer alteration.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-06, volume=408, issue=8843, page=68, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= The rise of smart beta , passage=Investors face a quandary. Cash offers a return of virtually zero in many developed countries; government-bond yields may have risen in recent weeks but they are still unattractive. Equities have suffered two big bear markets since 2000 and are wobbling again. It is hardly surprising that pension funds, insurers and endowments are searching for new sources of return.}}
  • (archaic) To allow.
  • * The U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 203:
  • "Employ" includes to suffer or permit to work.
  • * Section 31-36 of the Code of Montgomery County, Maryland:
  • *KJV, Matthew 19:14
  • *:But Jesus said, suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
  • Synonyms

    * (l)

    Derived terms

    * insufferable * sufferer * suffering * suffer fools gladly * suffer by comparison

    Anagrams

    * ----

    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

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