different between difficult vs offcome

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

• off-come

Etymology

From off- +? come.

Noun

offcome

1. That which comes off or the act or process of coming off; emission.
   • 1883, Royal Astronomical Society, NASA Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service, OCLC FirstSearch Electronic Collections Online, Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Volume 45 - Page 96:

     […] to observe as regards exact direction, owing (especially in the instance of pretty bright meteors) to the dense offcome of sparks from the nucleus, or to the phosphorescence it generates as the result of concussion with the air.

2. The way any thing or business turns out; the way a person comes off from an encounter or enterprise; result; outcome; reception.
   • 1885, Francis Warner, Physical expression: its modes and principles - Page 37:

     Such movement is called reflex action, or reflex movement, in distinction from the case of the statue, where there is no change or movement in the subject, which is passive, all expression being an offcome, not an "outcome;" […]

   • 2010, H. W. Dickinson, James Watt: Craftsman and Engineer - Page 21:

     In July he wrote to his father: "I have not yet got a master, they all make some objection or other" and no wonder, for who wanted such an "offcome"?

3. (Britain, dialectal, chiefly Scotland) An apology; excuse.
4. (Britain, dialectal, chiefly Scotland) An escape or evasion by subterfuge or pretext; a way of avoiding or getting out of a difficult or uncomfortable situation.
5. An exhibition of temper.

Synonyms

• excuse

Anagrams

• come off, come-off