different between difficult vs demand

English

Etymology

From Middle English difficult (ca. 1400), a back-formation from difficultee (whence modern difficulty), from Old French difficulté, from Latin difficultas, from difficul, older form of difficilis (“hard to do, difficult”), from dis- + facilis (“easy”); see difficile. Replaced native Middle English earveþ (“difficult, hard”), from Old English earfoþe (“difficult, laborious, full of hardship”), cognate to German Arbeit (“work”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?d?f?k?lt/

Adjective

difficult (comparative difficulter or more difficult, superlative difficultest or most difficult)

1. Hard, not easy, requiring much effort.

   However, the difficult weather conditions will ensure Yunnan has plenty of freshwater.

   • There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world, alone.
2. (often of a person, or a horse, etc) Hard to manage, uncooperative, troublesome.

3. (obsolete) Unable or unwilling.

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. 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 Thesaurus:difficult

Derived terms

• difficultly

Translations

Verb

difficult (third-person singular simple present difficults, present participle difficulting, simple past and past participle difficulted)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To make difficult; to impede; to perplex.
   • August 9 1678, William Temple, letter to Joseph Williamson

     their Excellencies having desisted from their pretensions , which had difficulted the peace

Further reading

• difficult in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• difficult in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

English

Alternative forms

• demaund, demaunde (obsolete)

Etymology

From late Middle English demaunden, from Old French demander, from Latin d?mand?, d?mand?re.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /d??m??nd/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /d??mænd/, /d??mænd/
• Rhymes: -??nd, -ænd
• Hyphenation: de?mand

Noun

demand (countable and uncountable, plural demands)

1. The desire to purchase goods and services.
2. (economics) The amount of a good or service that consumers are willing to buy at a particular price.
3. A forceful claim for something.
4. A requirement.

5. An urgent request.

6. An order.
7. (electricity supply) More precisely peak demand or peak load, a measure of the maximum power load of a utility's customer over a short period of time; the power load integrated over a specified time interval.

Usage notes

One can also make demands on someone.

• See Appendix:Collocations of do, have, make, and take for uses and meaning of demand collocated with these words.

Synonyms

• (a requirement): imposition

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

demand (third-person singular simple present demands, present participle demanding, simple past and past participle demanded)

1. To request forcefully.

2. To claim a right to something.

3. To ask forcefully for information.

4. To require of someone.

5. (law) To issue a summons to court.

Synonyms

• call for

• insist
• (ask strongly): frain

Translations

Anagrams

• Dedman, Madden, damned, madden, manded