Word.ws English Dictionary

makes hard work of

makes hard work of is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 makes hard work of

What is makes hard work of the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Makes hard work of is the third-person singular simple present indicative of make hard work of.

Words near makes hard work of in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: makes 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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