difficulty; hardness; impracticability (impossibility); tough work, hard work, uphill work; hard task, Herculean task, Augean task; task of Sisyphus, Sisyphean labor, tough job, teaser, rasper, dead lift., dilemma, embarrassment; deadlock; perplexity (uncertainty); intricacy; entanglement; cross fire; awkwardness, delicacy, ticklish card to play, knot, Gordian knot, dignus vindice nodus, net, meshes, maze; coil (convolution); crooked path; involvement., nice point, delicate point, subtle point, knotty point; vexed question, vexata quaestio, poser; puzzle (riddle); paradox; hard nut to crack, nut to crack; bone to pick, crux, pons asinorum, where the shoe pinches., nonplus, quandary, strait, pass, pinch, pretty pass, stress, brunt; critical situation, crisis; trial, rub, emergency, exigency, scramble., scrape, hobble, slough, quagmire, hot water, hornet's nest; sea of troubles, peck of troubles; pretty kettle of fish; pickle, stew, imbroglio, mess, ado; false position., set fast, stand; deadlock, dead set., fix, horns of a dilemma, cul de sac; hitch; stumblng block (hindrance).

be difficult; run one hard, go against the grain, try one's patience, put one out; put to one's shifts, put to one's wit's end; go hard with one, try one; pose, perplex (uncertain); bother, nonplus, gravel, bring to a deadlock; be impossible; be in the way of (hinder)., meet with difficulties; labor under difficulties; get into difficulties; plunge into difficulties; struggle with difficulties; contend with difficulties; grapple with difficulties; labor under a disadvantage; be in difficulty, fish in troubled waters, buffet the waves, swim against the stream, scud under bare poles., have much ado with, have a hard time of it; come to the push, come to the pinch; bear the brunt., grope in the dark, lose one's way, weave a tangled web, walk among eggs., get into a scrape; bring a hornet's nest about one's ears; be put to one's shifts; flounder, boggle, struggle; not know which way to turn (uncertain); perdre son Latin; stick at, stick in the mud, stick fast; come to a stand, come to a deadlock; hold the wolf by the ears., render difficult; enmesh, encumber, embarrass, ravel, entangle; put a spoke in the wheel (hinder); lead a pretty dance.

difficult, not easy, hard, tough; troublesome, toilsome, irksome; operose, laborious, onerous, arduous, Herculean, formidable; sooner said than done; more easily said than done., difficult to deal with, hard to deal with; ill-conditioned, crabbed; not to be handled with kid gloves, not made with rose water., awkward, unwieldy, unmanageable; intractable, stubborn (obstinate); perverse, refractory, plaguy, trying, thorny, rugged; knotted, knotty; invious; pathless, trackless; labyrinthine (convoluted); intricate, complicated (tangled); impracticable (impossible); not feasible; desperate (hopeless)., embarrassing, perplexing (uncertain); delicate, ticklish, critical; beset with difficulties, full of difficulties, surrounded by difficulties, entangled by difficulties, encompassed with difficulties.

with difficulty, with much ado; hardly; uphill; against the stream, against the grain; a rebours; invita Minerva; in the teeth of; at a pinch, upon a pinch; at long odds.