hard-boiled

American  

[hahrd-boild] / ˈhɑrdˈbɔɪld /

adjective

1. Cooking. (of an egg) boiled in the shell long enough for the yolk and white to solidify.

2. Informal. tough; unsentimental.

   a hard-boiled vice-squad detective.

3. marked by a direct, clear-headed approach; realistic.

   a hard-boiled appraisal of the foreign situation.

4. (of detective fiction) written in a laconic, dispassionate, often ironic style for a realistic, unsentimental effect.

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hard-boiled British  

adjective

1. (of an egg) boiled until the yolk and white are solid

2. informal

   1. tough, realistic

   2. cynical

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Other Word Forms

• hard-boiledness noun

Etymology

Origin of hard-boiled

1715–25; 1895–80 hard-boiled for def. 2; hard + boiled

Example Sentences

As his deceit becomes apparent, the music shifts from crisp hip-hop beats to a hard-boiled film noir crescendo.

From BBC • Mar. 26, 2026

It’s what I like to call a maximalist egg — an egg, whether omelet, scrambled, or even hard-boiled, that doesn’t skimp on anything.

From Salon • Mar. 21, 2026

Crime fiction became more realistic, an approach presaged by Dashiell Hammett and other hard-boiled American writers in the 1920s.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 20, 2026

She was a fan of hard-boiled eggs and slices of fresh avocado, and she, too, loved to read about the pink of strawberry ice lollies and the red of sunsets and the orange of oranges.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 1, 2026

Always she had a stuffed hard-boiled egg and she would hold it in her hand, mashing the yellow with her thumb so that the print of her finger was left there.

From "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers

Related Words

• hard-nosed