Word.ws English Dictionary

make hard work of

make hard work of verb: to do (something) in a way that makes it more difficult than it needs to be.

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
    • I made hard work of a very easy task .1905, Ad Sense: Devoted to the Interests of Buyers of Advertising, page 582
  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
    • While we had made hard work of defeating Sheffield United in our FA Cup semifinal, Spurs were breezing past Burnley 3–0 in the other tie.2003, Gordon Banks, Banksy: The Autobiography of an English Football Hero

Forms of make hard work of

third-person singular presentmakes hard work of
present participlemaking hard work of
past participlemade hard work of
pastmade hard work of
alternative formmake heavy work of

Questions about make hard work of

What does make hard work of mean?
Make hard work of means to do (something) in a way that makes it more difficult than it needs to be.
What part of speech is make hard work of?
Make hard work of is a verb.
What is the past tense of make hard work of?
The past tense of make hard work of is made hard work of.

Words near make hard work of in the dictionary

  1. make good on
  2. make good one's running
  3. make good time
  4. make ground
  5. make happen
  6. make hard work of
  7. make haste
  8. make haste slowly
  9. make hay
  10. make hay while the sun shines
  11. make head against

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “make hard work of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/make_hard_work_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.