What's the difference between difficulty and ease?

Difficulty


Definition:

  • (n.) The state of being difficult, or hard to do; hardness; arduousness; -- opposed to easiness or facility; as, the difficulty of a task or enterprise; a work of difficulty.
  • (n.) Something difficult; a thing hard to do or to understand; that which occasions labor or perplexity, and requires skill and perseverance to overcome, solve, or achieve; a hard enterprise; an obstacle; an impediment; as, the difficulties of a science; difficulties in theology.
  • (n.) A controversy; a falling out; a disagreement; an objection; a cavil.
  • (n.) Embarrassment of affairs, especially financial affairs; -- usually in the plural; as, to be in difficulties.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Technical factors that account for increased difficulty in these patients include: problems with guide catheter impaction and ostial trauma; inability to inflate the balloon with adequate guide catheter support; and need for increased intracoronary manipulation.
  • (2) To overcome this difficulty, a "hetero-antibody" RIA was studied.
  • (3) Epidemiological studies on low risks involve a number of major methodological difficulties.
  • (4) Mild swallowing difficulties occurred in 18 patients (39%), moderate dysfunction in 23 (50%), and severe dysfunction in five (11%).
  • (5) Reasons for non-acceptance do not indicate any major difficulties in the employment of such staff in general practice, at least as far as the patients are concerned.
  • (6) Spontaneous reports of suspected adverse reactions may be the only way of revealing very rare events but they present great difficulties of rational interpretation.
  • (7) The indication of the DNA probe method would be considered in the four cases as follows, 1. necessity of the special equipment to isolate the pathogen, 2. necessity of the long period to isolate the pathogen, 3. existence of the cross reaction among the pathogen and relative organisms in the immunological procedure, 4. existence of the difficulty to identify the species of the pathogen by the ordinary procedure.
  • (8) The 1-0-methylalduronic-acidmethylesters, obtained by the methanolysis of the polysaccharides, are reduced with boronhydrid to the corresponding methyl glycosides; there are split with acid to the aldoses, which are converted in pyridine with hydroxylamine to the aldoximes and than with acetic anhydride to the aldonitrilacetates, which can be separated by gaschromatography without difficulty.
  • (9) A control experiment demonstrated that changes in general arousal could not account for the effects of task difficulty on neuronal responses.
  • (10) In the anatomy laboratory we looked for an alternative approach to the glenohumeral joint which would accommodate these difficulties.
  • (11) A 27-year-old lady presented with history of discomfort in the throat and difficulty in swallowing for two weeks.
  • (12) Especially in the old patients (over 70 years) the incisional hernias represents an invalidating pathology whose treatment, for the high incidence of associated diseases of respiratory and cardiocirculatory apparatus in the aged, offers difficulties connected both to surgical methods and to the perioperative evaluation and preparation of patients.
  • (13) Marked pain and great difficulty in introducing the apparatus made its use limited in respectively 15% and 14.5% of cases.
  • (14) The tasks which appeared to present the most difficulties for the patients were written spelling, pragmatic processing tasks like sentence disambiguation and proverb interpretation.
  • (15) In favorable cases, tRNA-DNA hybrids of length about 80 nucleotide pairs can be recognized (although with difficulty).
  • (16) The patient with the right posterior lesion could not recognize handwriting, was prosopagnosic and topographagnosic, but had no difficulty in reading, lipreading, or in recognizing stylized drawings.
  • (17) A review of the literature summarises the difficulties of diagnosis.
  • (18) The major difficulty encountered with the current technique is the danger of neurologic injury during the passage and handling of conventional wires, especially in extensive procedures.
  • (19) However six equivocal studies were observed in profoundly jaundiced patients with bilirubin levels above 400 mumol l-1 due to difficulties in differentiating extrahepatic obstruction from severe intrahepatic cholestasis.
  • (20) While mindful of the potential difficulties which attend its introduction into the treatment situation there is an attempt to balance this position through a consideration of the appropriate conditions and modes of operation under which a humor-enriched approach may be efficacious.

Ease


Definition:

  • (n.) Satisfaction; pleasure; hence, accommodation; entertainment.
  • (n.) Freedom from anything that pains or troubles; as: (a) Relief from labor or effort; rest; quiet; relaxation; as, ease of body.
  • (n.) Freedom from care, solicitude, or anything that annoys or disquiets; tranquillity; peace; comfort; security; as, ease of mind.
  • (n.) Freedom from constraint, formality, difficulty, embarrassment, etc.; facility; liberty; naturalness; -- said of manner, style, etc.; as, ease of style, of behavior, of address.
  • (n.) To free from anything that pains, disquiets, or oppresses; to relieve from toil or care; to give rest, repose, or tranquility to; -- often with of; as, to ease of pain; ease the body or mind.
  • (n.) To render less painful or oppressive; to mitigate; to alleviate.
  • (n.) To release from pressure or restraint; to move gently; to lift slightly; to shift a little; as, to ease a bar or nut in machinery.
  • (n.) To entertain; to furnish with accommodations.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, recently proposed a bill that would ease the financial burden of prescription drugs on elderly Americans by allowing Medicare, the national social health insurance program, to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies to keep prices down.
  • (2) Gains in gait pattern, ease of bracing, and reduced pelvic obliquity were noted.
  • (3) "Runners, for instance, need a high level of running economy, which comes from skill acquisition and putting in the miles," says Scrivener, "But they could effectively ease off the long runs and reduce the overall mileage by introducing Tabata training.
  • (4) Experiments have been performed using CO2 laser-assisted microvascular anastomoses, and they demonstrated the following features, in comparison with conventional anastomoses: ease in technique; less time consumption; less tissue inflammation; early wound healing; equivalency of patency rate and inner pressure tolerance; but only about 50 percent of the tensile strength of manual-suture anastomosis.
  • (5) It was the ease with which minor debt could slide into a tangle of hunger and despair.
  • (6) The particular advantage of the method described here is the ease with which the supernatants can be collected and transferred to counting vials with minimal handling of radioactive samples.
  • (7) What about the "credit easing" George Osborne announced in his conference speech?
  • (8) The dried-specimen-teasing method appears useful, because of the ease of preparation of the specimens, its reproducibility, and the degree of visibility and preservation of cell surface structures and intraclonal relationships.
  • (9) A modification of a previously described curved ruler, the current model has a hinge for greater ease of maneuverability and a "T" piece on one end to facilitate measurement and marking of both poles of the muscle without repositioning the ruler.
  • (10) By easing these huge flows of hundreds of billions across borders, the single currency played a material role in causing the continent's crisis.
  • (11) They had been pinning their hopes on Alan Johnson who has, in their eyes, the natural authority and ease of manner which Miliband has struggled to develop.
  • (12) Ease of use has meant that a greater number of patients with superficial burns can be treated as outpatients and many are able to do their own daily dressing change, so fewer attendances at the clinic are needed.
  • (13) The participants strongly preferred the experimental leaflets to the approved leaflets, both with respect to accessibility of the contents (overall preference 78.1% v 17.8%) and ease of understanding the contraindications of drug use (90.2% v 73.7%).
  • (14) Greece standoff over €86bn bailout eases after Brussels deal Read more But while the bailout chiefs are poised to agree on a route map, the journey for the Greek people seems no less long and arduous.
  • (15) This article describes the development of REHAB, a behavior rating scale for use with people with chronic psychiatric disability, which has been carefully designed with respect to content, format, and ease of use.
  • (16) This modification allows for precision of movement, ease of repositioning, and adaptation of rigid skeletal stabilization of mobilized osseous segments in the chin.
  • (17) There is never any chink in her composure – any hint of tension – and while I can't imagine what it must feel like to be so at ease with one's world, I don't think she is faking it.
  • (18) Clinical open trials of beta-methyldigoxin were carried out in 15 institutions in order to examine the effect, usefulness and ease of its oral administration.
  • (19) The ease of use of this form of DRB typing is emphasized and potential complications are discussed.
  • (20) He has some suggestions for what might be done, including easing changing the planning laws to free up parts of the green belt, financial incentives to persuade local authorities to build, and the replacement of the council tax and stamp duty land tax with a new local property tax with automatic annual revaluations.