hard cash

American

noun

actual money as distinguished from checks or credit.

hard cash British

noun

money or payment in the form of coins or notes rather than cheques or credit

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

hard cash Idioms

see cold cash.

Example Sentences

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hard cash

At least the latter pay their way in cold, hard cash.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 9, 2026

He wants cold hard cash, plus a couple of private islands, planes and ultra-luxury yachts.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 18, 2026

Contemporaries were convinced that his motivation for publishing Mansfield’s ephemera wasn’t so much reverence for her talent as greed for hard cash.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 30, 2026

The impoverished North has moved to revive inbound tourism to earn much-needed hard cash in the face of sanctions over its nuclear programmes, developing lavish coast and mountain resorts.

From Barron's ● Jan. 27, 2026

Its value could be calculated in hard cash, for it saved his wheat.

From By Right of Purchase by Bindloss, Harold

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023