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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

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

hard-pressed hard pressed

For the life of me, I’m hard-pressed to imagine a greater reward.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2026

A reader is hard-pressed to resist becoming a poetry stan, so persuasive is Garmus’ Batter.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2026

Japanese authorities are, for example, hard-pressed to conduct an on-site probe into alleged environmental pollution inside the bases and regulate low-altitude flights of their aircraft.

From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026

One thing that stood out from the press conference following the September rate-hike decision was that Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh said he would be hard-pressed to describe broad financial conditions as restrictive.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 4, 2026

You would have been hard-pressed to find anyone in Wall who would have argued with him, though; she turned many heads and, in all probability, broke many hearts.

From "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman

Warsh said he would be hard pressed to describe broad financial conditions as restrictive, with credit and loan markets showing few signs of restraint.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026

An astonishing number of them opened here, in Southern California, although you would be hard pressed to find many nowadays.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 22, 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

State and local agencies are hard pressed to fill the gap, with a recent report surveying over 1,600 state and local emergency management directors indicating they are “overworked, underpaid, understaffed, and underappreciated.”

From Salon ● Aug. 7, 2025

I felt kind of suffocated by his T-shirt, but it felt good to be held so hard, pressed into the comfortable smell of my dad.

From "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green

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