Arduous

How to spell arduous

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce arduous

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does arduous mean?

1. adjectiveRequiring great and sustained effort; difficult and tiring.

Arduous in a sentence

• The arduous climb to the summit took the hikers most of the day.

• Completing the tax return was an arduous process that consumed her entire weekend.

Where does arduous come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin arduus, an adjective that literally meant 'steep' or 'high', describing ground that was difficult to climb. The Romans used it both for towering, lofty places and, by natural extension, for any task that demanded a hard, uphill effort. English adopted it in the early sixteenth century, keeping that figurative sense of strenuous difficulty while quietly dropping the literal image of a steep slope. The same root surfaces in the much rarer word 'arduinity' and is distantly linked to ideas of growing tall and upright. The spelling trap lives in the ending: writers know the word ends with a 'you' sound but hesitate over the 'u' before the '-ous', producing the correct '-uous' run of vowels rather than a misspelled '-ous'.

How the word is built

• ardu- (from Latin arduus: steep, hard to climb)
• -ous (adjective suffix: full of, characterised by)