arduous
adjective
Did you know?
Arduous isn’t the type of word one expects to hear in a folk song—it’s a bit too formal—but strenuous work and difficult journeys are the stuff of many a classic tune. Take “The Wayfaring Stranger,” for an example, a somber song about life’s travails performed by everyone from singer and activist Paul Robeson to country star Emmylou Harris: “I know dark clouds will gather o’er me / I know my pathway’s rough and steep.” Such a lyric gets at the dual literal/figurative nature of arduous, which comes from the Latin adjective arduus, meaning “high,” “steep,” or “difficult.” For quite a while after appearing in English in the mid-1500s, arduous hewed closely to the figurative “strenuous” or “difficult” sense until poet Alexander Pope invoked steepness when he wrote of “those arduous paths they trod” in his 1711 work “An Essay on Criticism.” To pen such a work at the age of 23, and in heroic couplets no less, must have been an arduous challenge indeed, but like the wayfaring stranger seeking a brighter land, Pope had his eyes on the prize.
Synonyms
Examples of arduous in a Sentence
Tony Perrottet, Smithsonian, July 2008
As yoga classes go, this is not an arduous one, but the students don't know that.
—Richard Corliss, Time, 23 Apr. 2001
Women of middling means had the most to gain from increased consumption, for imported goods often reduced their long and arduous labor, especially in making candles and soap or in spinning and weaving cloth.
—Alan Taylor, American Colonies, 2000
He went through a long and arduous training program.
an arduous journey across miles of desert
Trudy Haywood Saunders, Travel + Leisure, 2 Apr. 2024
In remote swaths of eastern San Diego County, those who turn themselves in to border authorities have often endured arduous journeys through steep mountainous terrain and desert land, arriving at the holding areas in deteriorated health.
—Emily Baumgaertner, New York Times, 28 Mar. 2024
See all Example Sentences for arduous 
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Dictionary Entries Near arduous
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“Arduous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arduous. Accessed 17 Apr. 2024.
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arduous
adjective
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