Chapter Words Relating to the Voluntary Powers of Index by Roget's Thesaurus

Words Relating to the Voluntary Powers

Division I.—Individual Volition

Section IV.—Antagonism

I°. Conditional Antagonism

704. Difficulty (Substantives), delicacy, hardness, hard work, hard task, troublesomeness, laboriousness.

Impracticability, infeasibility, intractability, toughness, perverseness, see Impossibility 471.

Embarrassment, awkwardness, perplexity, intricacy, intricateness, entanglement, knot, Gordian knot, labyrinth, net, meshes, maze, etc. 248.

Dilemma, nice point, delicate point, knotty point, stumblingblock, vexed question, crux; pons asinorum, poser, puzzle, floorer, nonplus, quandary, strait, pass, critical situation, crisis, trial, emergency, exigency, scramble.

Scrape, hobble, fix, hole, lurch, contretemps, hitch, how-d'ye-do, slough, quagmire, hot water, stew, imbroglio, mess, ado, false position, stand, deadlock, encumbrance, cul-de-sac, impasse.

(Phrases). A screw loose; a ticklish card to play; a sea of troubles; horns of a dilemma; a peck of troubles; a kettle of fish; a handful; "Ay, there's the rub."

(Verbs). To be difficult, etc.

To meet with, experience, labour under, get into, plunge into, be surrounded by, be encompassed with, be entangled by, to struggle, contend against or grapple with difficulties.

To come to a stand, to stick fast, to be set fast, to boggle, flounder, get left.

(Phrases). To stand in one's own light; come to a deadlock; to get into hot water; to put one's foot in it; to get into a mess; to be bunkered; to fish in troubled waters; to buffet the waves; to be put to one's shifts; not to know whether one stands on one's head or one's heels; perdre son Latin; to skate over thin ice.

To render difficult, etc., to embarrass, perplex, put one out, bother, pose, puzzle, floor, nonplus, ravel, entangle, gravel, flummox, run hard.

(Phrases). To lead a pretty dance; to put to one's shifts; to put a spoke in one's wheel; leave in the lurch; bring to a deadlock.

(Adjectives). Difficult, not easy, hard, stiff, troublesome, laborious, onerous, operose, awkward, unwieldy, beset with or full of difficulties, uphill work, Herculean, Sisyphean.

Unmanageable, tough, stubborn, hard to deal with, difficile, ill-conditioned, refractory, perverse, crabbed, intractable, against the grain.

Embarrassing, perplexing, delicate, ticklish, pernickety, intricate, thorny, spiny, knotty, tricky, pathless, trackless, labyrinthine.

Impracticable, not possible, impossible 471, not practicable, not feasible, infeasible, unachievable, uncomeatable, inextricable, impassable, innavigable, desperate, insuperable, insurmountable, unplayable.

In difficulty, perplexed, etc., beset, waterlogged, put to it, hard put to it, run hard, hard pressed, thrown out, adrift, at fault, abroad, pushed.

Stranded, aground, stuck fast, at bay.

(Phrases). At a stand-still; at a stand; surrounded with shoals and breakers; thrown on one's beam-ends; out of one's depth; at the end of one's resources; put to one's shifts; in a cleft stick; on a wrong scent; driven