rocky road

noun

: a difficult time

He knew he had a long rocky road ahead of him if he wanted to become a doctor.

Examples of rocky road in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Having finished his first day at the SDN (Superhero Dispatch Network), where just about everyone but his old buddy Chase (Jeffrey Wright) and new boss Blonde Blazer (Erin Yvette) hate him, Robert’s just getting started on his rocky road to redemption. —Christopher Cruz, Rolling Stone, 30 Oct. 2025

Those six weeks have been a rocky road, but fans’ hopes are high going into Week 7. —Chandler Boese, Kansas City Star, 17 Oct. 2025

Instead of neat, layered structures, perhaps resembling a smooth slice of Millionaire's Shortbread, Mars' mantle is more like a rocky road brownie — chunky, uneven, and filled with ancient debris from its violent beginnings. —Stefanie Waldek, Space.com, 4 Sep. 2025

When planetary scientists say the interior of Mars resembles a rocky road brownie more than a piece of buttery shortbread, the tasty metaphor masks billions of years of geological violence. —Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 28 Aug. 2025

Rhymes for rocky road

• afterload
• episode
• internode
• microcode
• multimode
• nematode
• nesselrode
• overflowed
• overload
• overrode
• radioed
• torpedoed