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• hard rock
  hard rock

  noun

  the original form of rock-'n'-roll, basically dependent on a consistently loud and strong beat.
• hard-rock
  hard-rock

  adjective

  (loosely) of or relating to igneous or metamorphic rocks, as in mining hard-rock mining and geology hard-rock geology.

hard rock

¹ American  

noun

• hard rocks
  plural

1. the original form of rock-'n'-roll, basically dependent on a consistently loud and strong beat.

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hard-rock ² American  

[hahrd-rok] / ˈhɑrdˌrɒk /

adjective

1. (loosely) of or relating to igneous or metamorphic rocks, as in mining hard-rock mining and geology hard-rock geology.

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hard rock British  

noun

1. music a rhythmically simple and usually highly amplified style of rock and roll

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• hard rocker
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• hard rocks
  plural

Etymology

Origin of hard rock¹

First recorded in 1965–70

Origin of hard-rock²

First recorded in 1920–25

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

hard rock hard-rock

The group’s self-titled, guitar-drenched first album met a desire for hard rock when many popular artists were pivoting to disco and funk.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026

There he managed hard rock acts including Korn and Limp Bizkit, helping make them superstars of the “TRL” era.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 7, 2026

Their music was a blend of blues rock and hard rock with elements of cabaret.

From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2026

Most of the fossil remains encased in hard rock, and manually removing it could take years.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 1, 2026

My heart became a cold, hard rock against his words.

From "The Season of Styx Malone" by Kekla Magoon

He played football for his school team, devoured Harry Potter and Percy Jackson novels, loved science-fiction films and spent hours teaching himself hard-rock guitar riffs.

From BBC ● Aug. 2, 2026

Like many of Brazil’s rare-earth deposits, Viridis’s reserves are found in clay, which executives say is cheaper and easier to process than the hard-rock deposits common in Australia and elsewhere.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 9, 2026

He thought they were a hard-rock parody of an early-1960s bubblegum band.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 27, 2026

The veteran Swedish hard-rock group Ghost — also evilly masked and grimly aliased — claimed its first No. 1 LP with “Skeletá” in May too.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 28, 2025

Mixed in with all the college students and farm boys and out- of-work loggers, there were grizzled hard-rock miners from all over the West.

From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown