hard-and-fast
strongly binding; not to be set aside or violated: hard-and-fast rules.
Origin of hard-and-fast
1Other words for hard-and-fast
Other words from hard-and-fast
- hard-and-fastness, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use hard-and-fast in a sentence
At the least, there must be hard-and-fast laws about insider trading, right?
Following his hard-and-fast rule, Mr. Norcross didn't deny himself to anybody.
The Wreckers | Francis LyndeHe saw in painting a sort of abstract geometry for which there existed hard-and-fast forms.
The History of Modern Painting, Volume 1 (of 4) | Richard MutherYour hard-and-fast scientific men—your Spencers and Huxleys—they don't understand that.
Tono Bungay | H. G. WellsA physician, for example, deliberately avoids such hard-and-fast alternatives as have been postulated in our instance.
Essays in Experimental Logic | John Dewey
But he never takes it as a hard-and-fast principle which must at all costs be imposed upon the facts.
Form and Function | E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
British Dictionary definitions for hard and fast
(hard-and-fast when prenominal) (esp of rules) invariable or strict
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Other Idioms and Phrases with hard-and-fast
Defined, fixed, invariable, as in We have hard and fast rules for this procedure. This term originally was applied to a vessel that has come out of water, either by running aground or being put in dry dock, and is therefore unable to move. By the mid-1800s it was being used figuratively.
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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