Word.ws English Dictionary

made hard work of

made hard work of is the simple past and past participle of make hard work of.

Meaning of make hard work of

Verb

make hard work of (third-person singular simple present makes hard work of, present participle making hard work of, simple past and past participle made hard work of)

  1. (idiomatic) To do (something) in a way that makes it more difficult than it needs to be.
    • The motion is from the shoulder rather than from the elbow, moving the whole arm, and there is no need to make hard work of it.1895, Wisconsin Farmers' Institutes, A Hand-book of Agriculture, page 196
  2. (idiomatic) To struggle to accomplish something.
    • For arithmetic to-day, as the pupils made hard work of the examples yesterday, I changed only the numbers.1891, John Pancoast Gordy, Rise and Growth of the Normal-school Idea in the United States, page 80

Questions about made hard work of

What is made hard work of the simple past and past participle of?
Made hard work of is the simple past and past participle of make hard work of.

Words near made hard work of in the dictionary

  1. made good time
  2. made ground
  3. made hand
  4. made hands
  5. made happen
  6. made hard work of
  7. made haste
  8. made haste slowly
  9. made hay
  10. made hay while the sun shone
  11. made head against

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: made hard work of (page history and authors); make hard work of (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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