different between involved vs difficult

English

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?n?v?lvd/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?n?v?lvd/
• Hyphenation: in?volved

Adjective

involved (comparative more involved, superlative most involved)

1. complicated.

   He related an involved story about every ancestor since 1895.

   • 1915, W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage, ch. 43

     Miss Price told him a long, involved story, which made out that Mrs. Otter, a humdrum and respectable little person, had scabrous intrigues.

2. Associated with others, be a participant or make someone be a participant (in a crime, process, etc.)

   He was involved in the project for three years.

   He got involved in a bar fight.

   When the family wrapped up my father's will, no one tried to make me feel involved.

3. Having an affair with someone.

Derived terms

• involvedly
• involvedness

Translations

Verb

involved

1. simple past tense and past participle of involve

   The explanation involved potatoes, squirrels, and race cars.

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.