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• hard-pressed
  hard-pressed

  adjective

  heavily burdened or oppressed, as by overwork or financial difficulties; harried; put-upon.
• hard pressed
  hard pressed

  Overburdened, put upon, as in With all these bills to pay we find ourselves hard pressed. [c. 1800]

hard-pressed

American  

[hahrd-prest] / ˈhɑrdˈprɛst /

Or hardpressed

adjective

1. heavily burdened or oppressed, as by overwork or financial difficulties; harried; put-upon.

   Synonyms:

   beleaguered

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hard-pressed British  

adjective

1. in difficulties

   the swimmer was hard-pressed

2. subject to severe competition

3. subject to severe attack

4. closely pursued

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hard pressed Idioms  

1. Overburdened, put upon, as in With all these bills to pay we find ourselves hard pressed. [c. 1800]

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Etymology

Origin of hard-pressed

First recorded in 1815–25

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

hard-pressed hard pressed

That’s especially useful during a global event like the World Cup—when even the most devoted soccer fan is hard-pressed to keep track of every group-stage result, knockout permutation, and concurring match windows.

From Slate ● Jun. 10, 2026

But it also found hard-pressed councils trying to do the right thing in difficult circumstances - often as a result of issues such as budget cuts and specialist skill shortages.

From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2026

It’s an incredible level of control that investors would be hard-pressed to find in publicly traded companies.

From Barron's ● May 20, 2026

“You’d be hard-pressed to find many filmmakers that have had the run of quality that he has,” says Michael Barker, co-president and co-founder of Sony Pictures Classics, Almodóvar’s long-standing North American distribution partner.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 11, 2026

In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find a processed food today that isn’t made from corn or soybeans.

From "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan

But one would be hard pressed to argue that any comedy ever surpassed “Trouble in Paradise” for invention and refinement.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 10, 2026

Throw in the affordability crisis — from food to energy bills — and you have an economic outlook that Nostradamus would be hard pressed to predict.

From MarketWatch ● Dec. 15, 2025

He’d be hard pressed to find anyone capable of cogent thought who agrees with him.

From Salon ● Oct. 17, 2025

When Ronan Keating answered a newspaper advert to audition for Boyzone in 1993, he would have been hard pressed to believe more than 30 years later he would still be hitting the stage.

From BBC ● Jun. 3, 2025

From eight billion light-years away we are hard pressed to find even the cluster in which our Milky Way Galaxy is embedded, much less the Sun or the Earth.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan