ARDUOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does arduous mean? 

• ARDUOUS (adjective)
  The adjective ARDUOUS has 3 senses:

1. characterized by effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort

2. taxing to the utmost; testing powers of endurance

3. difficult to accomplish; demanding considerable mental effort and skill

  Familiarity information: ARDUOUS used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ARDUOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Characterized by effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort

Synonyms:

arduous; backbreaking; grueling; gruelling; hard; heavy; laborious; operose; punishing; toilsome

Context example:

set a punishing pace

Similar:

effortful (requiring great physical effort)

Derivation:

arduousness (extreme effortfulness)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Taxing to the utmost; testing powers of endurance

Synonyms:

arduous; straining; strenuous

Context example:

your willingness after these six arduous days to remain here

Similar:

effortful (requiring great physical effort)

Derivation:

arduousness (extreme effortfulness)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Difficult to accomplish; demanding considerable mental effort and skill

Context example:

the arduous work of preparing a dictionary

Similar:

difficult; hard (not easy; requiring great physical or mental effort to accomplish or comprehend or endure)

Derivation:

arduousness (extreme effortfulness)

 Context examples 

Brissenden had been wholly right in his judgment of the magazines, and he, Martin, had spent arduous and futile years in order to find it out for himself.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

It was a slow and arduous task.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

The day had been long and arduous, and he slept soundly and comfortably, though he growled and barked and wrestled with bad dreams.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

But it’s an arduous task, said ICB professor and study coordinator Julio Cesar Batista Ferreira.

(Molecule created in Brazil helps fight heart failure, Agência Brasil)

The materials at present within my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an undertaking, but I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The great concourse of noblemen and famous soldiers, the national character of the contest, and the fact that this was a last trial of arms before what promised to be an arduous and bloody war, all united to make the event one of the most notable and brilliant that Bordeaux had ever seen.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Well, you can imagine how hard it was to settle down to arduous work at £ 2 a week when I knew that I could earn as much in a day by smearing my face with a little paint, laying my cap on the ground, and sitting still.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As I followed the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help thinking that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the flower he was, was an arduous place to rise in.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I trust that the labour and hazard of an investigation—of which the smallest results have been slowly pieced together, in the pressure of arduous avocations, under grinding penurious apprehensions, at rise of morn, at dewy eve, in the shadows of night, under the watchful eye of one whom it were superfluous to call Demon—combined with the struggle of parental Poverty to turn it, when completed, to the right account, may be as the sprinkling of a few drops of sweet water on my funeral pyre. I ask no more.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)