A great difficulty; a quandry. It is not located in any modern dictionary, and the references to the word are,
for the most part, quite obscure. However, this word remains in common use and most individuals who use it say that they have used it since they were young.
The roots of this word are uncertain; some claim that it is a deformation of "difficulty" (which would be quite grievous for a typographical error) while others maintain that it is a derivation of "fugue." (However, "defugue" then becomes a nonsensical abstraction, as TheDiscouragingWord.com has pointed out.)
Since this word is not located in modern dictionaries, it is often mis-spelled. (See Defugilty.) However, the spelling found in all
the internet references available (most of which are located on
university webservers) is "defugalty."
