Help me understand the sentence please

Question

This could be the hardest of his life.What does the sentence mean?   I only have this sentence with out any context.   It is hard to figure out what it means.  I can change the sentence.Would the following sentence make sense then?This could be the hardest time of his life.Is it grammatically correct and does it make sense? Could you help me understand it?   Thanks.

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

deborahjeong I only have this sentence ~~with out~~ without any context.

Then of course it's hard to figure out what it means. I don't think that we can read minds any better than you can.

The problem is that without context, we don't know the referent of the word "this". The only guess that makes sense to me — and remember that it is just a guess — is that it means "this task", "this job", or "this duty", or something else that could be hard to do.

This (job) could be the hardest (job) [of his life / that he will ever have to do in his life].

CJ

Help me understand the sentence please

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