make hard work of

• make heavy work of

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.
   • 1895, Wisconsin Farmers' Institutes, A Hand-book of Agriculture, page 196:

     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.

   • 1905, Ad Sense: Devoted to the Interests of Buyers of Advertising, page 582:

     I made hard work of a very easy task .

   • 1985, Maurice Taylor, Easy Steps to the Band, page 67:

     Don't make hard work of it . An instrument in good condition is easy to blow when properly played.

   • 2022, Andrew Rippin, The Qur'an and its Interpretative Tradition, page 47:

     Unfortunately, Versteegh made hard work of his task once again by using the rather difficult manuscript from Cairo, Dār al-kutub 242 (Versteegh describes this manuscript on p. 156 as "very hard to read, and we have managed to analyze only parts of it.").

2. (idiomatic) To struggle to accomplish something.
   • 1891, John Pancoast Gordy, Rise and Growth of the Normal-school Idea in the United States, page 80:

     For arithmetic to-day, as the pupils made hard work of the examples yesterday, I changed only the numbers.

   • 2003, Gordon Banks, Banksy: The Autobiography of an English Football Hero:

     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.

   • 2005, Gene Kerrigan, Hard Cases – True Stories of Irish Crime:

     As Wright opened the door he made hard work of it, rattling the key in the lock.

   • 2020 September 5, Phil McNulty, “Iceland 0-1 England”, in BBC Sport‎:

     England made hard work of the win against a stubborn and well-organised Iceland but were the better and more positive side.