hard-knock

American  

[hahrd-nok] / ˈhɑrdˈnɒk /

adjective

1. full of, familiar with, or arising from the experience of hardship and struggle.

   Life in this hard-knock town can be brutal.

   If I learned one thing from my hard-knock mother, it was that the show must always go on.

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Example Sentences

It’s a morality tale about the hard-knock life of a performer that recalls the warm character studies of Ms. Swift’s earlier work.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 6, 2025

But when I really close-read Annie’s hard-knock life, I couldn’t help but zero in on how bizarre it is—and how bizarre it is that we still love her so much.

From Slate • Aug. 17, 2024

Unlike other memoirists looking back through a scrim of nostalgia, Wang doesn’t romanticize her parents’ hard-knock decisions — Marilyn’s fate is among them — or the family’s difficult, sometimes desperate circumstances.

From New York Times • Sep. 7, 2021

But what became increasingly obvious with each crunchy step of survey work, is that a live tortoise lingering in this landscape is in for a hard-knock life.

From Washington Times • Sep. 6, 2020

The rehearsal is what I expect—a bunch of kids singing, “It’s a hard-knock life.”

From "Shouting at the Rain" by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Related Words

• adversity
• grief
• heartache
• misery
• misfortune
• woe