Difficulties

How to spell difficulties

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce difficulties

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does difficulties mean?

1. nounThings that are hard to deal with, or troubles and problems that obstruct progress.

Difficulties in a sentence

• The company ran into financial difficulties after losing its biggest client.

• She overcame considerable difficulties to finish her degree while working full time.

Where does difficulties come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin difficultas, meaning 'hardship' or 'trouble', which was formed from the adjective difficilis, 'not easy'. That adjective was built straightforwardly from the prefix dis-, meaning 'not' or 'apart', joined to facilis, 'easy', a word that itself came from facere, 'to do or make'; so something difficult was literally something that could 'not easily be done'. The noun passed into English through Old French difficulte during the 1300s, and the plural form simply adds the regular English ending. The same facere root that lies hidden in the middle of this word also gave us 'facile', 'factory', and 'manufacture'. The spelling trap is the single f after the prefix and the doubled letters around it: writers must remember the 'dif-fic-ult' shape and the unstressed vowels that all soften to a schwa in speech.

How the word is built

• dif- (variant of dis-: not)
• fic (from facilis: easy, ultimately facere: to do or make)
• -ulty (noun-forming suffix)
• -ies (plural)