場景：堅持不易

例句：A long uphill journey would it be to persevere during the times of doubt.

詞：uphill

英英釋義：something that is very difficult to do and needs a lot of effort and determination.

“uphill”可以作副詞和形容詞，“uphill”作形容詞本意是“上坡的”，可以引申為“艱難的、費力的”。當我們說一項任務非常艱難的時候，除了使用 difficult, hard, tough, demanding 等之外，還可以使用 uphill 來替換，讓表達更加貼切、形象。

uphill 經常修飾 struggle, battle, task, climb, fight 等詞。我們通過幾個例句來掌握它。當兩個球隊、兩個競爭對手實力、體量等差距懸殊時，往往就可以使用 uphill。比如中國男足和歐洲球隊比賽時勝率很小，就可以說：

1. Whenever the Chinese national football team plays a European team, it is going to be an uphill battle.

阿里巴巴這個電商巨頭的頭部效應明顯，新的電商玩家很難勝出，但拼多多終究還是成功了。就可以這么說：

2. Alibaba has been widely regarded as an e-commerce giant. Although it seemed like an uphill task for Pinduoduo to stand out, it dealt tactfully with the hard realities and went public merely three years after its launch.

今年 10 月《經濟學人》在一篇文章中分析了諾貝爾獎自成立以來獲獎人數的男女比例差距過大，文章摘要是這樣寫的：

3. Gender parity in science is an uphill struggle.

最后，我們來順便掌握 uphill 的反義詞 downhill。當我們想表達某某事情易如反掌的時候，就可以用它，一般的習慣表達是：be all downhill (from here) 或者 be downhill all the way (from here)。比如：

4. We have got the toughest part done, and it will be downhill all the way from here.