hard-bitten
Americanadjective
-
tough; stubborn.
-
conditioned by battle or struggle.
a hard-bitten army.
-
grim or severe in judgment or attitude.
a hard-bitten old teacher.
adjective
Etymology
Origin of hard-bitten
First recorded in 1775–85
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The cabbie, a hard-bitten postcommunist cynic, asks her if she’s visiting the archives “for work or fun.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 30, 2025
The British screen and stage star won an Emmy in 1975 for her portrayal of hard-bitten but ultimately kind-hearted maid Rose Buck in the TV drama about class in Edwardian England.
From BBC ● Apr. 13, 2025
Dip into the dad-canon iconography of Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective series, of which more than 40 hard-bitten installments have been released since the early 1970s?
From New York Times ● Jan. 13, 2024
Portis’s final novel, “Gringos,” which appeared in 1991, is a neo-noir that consolidates all the anxiety, comedy and magic of his previous work into the travails of a hard-bitten American expatriate named Jimmy Burns.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 13, 2023
It was a strange opposition: the hard-bitten private-eye expression on the face of a girl wearing a uniform for private school.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
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.
