hard as nails
IdiomsExample Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It was that he had all the best qualities you’d want in somebody; his heart of gold, and then you couple that with him just being hard as nails and tough, no quit ever.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2025
On these second-act hits, Tucker was no longer the wild and wise child; she was a full-grown romantic, who managed to be, at the same time, hard as nails.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 23, 2019
She has grown up hearing about her grandmother: a "kind, really caring, lovely woman with this hard as nails personality."
From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2015
She plays disempowered matriarch Carol – as hard as nails, like EastEnders' Lou Beale, but as brittle as pressed flowers when confronted with the horrible truth that her teenage sons have turned out bad 'uns.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 7, 2013
A week later we passed the broth shack, and there was a sixty-year-old woman working there, hard as nails, dishing out consommé.
From "Landscape with Invisible Hand" by M.T. Anderson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
