definitions

tough break

Also, tough luck. A trying or troublesome circumstance, bad luck, as in He got a tough break when he was denied a raise, or Tough luck for the team last night. This idiom uses tough in the sense of “difficult,” a usage dating from the early 1600s. The variant is also used as a sarcastic interjection, as in So you didn't make straight A's—tough luck! A slangy variant of this interjection is tough beans, and a ruder version is tough shit. [Colloquial; c. 1900]

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RELATED WORDS

misfortune, hardship, setback, tragedy, adversity, grief, peril, disaster, danger, oppression, suffering, hazard, discomfort, difficulty, calamity, fatigue, worry, misery, persecution, torment

Nearby words

touchy, touchy-feely, touché, touggourt, tough, tough break, tough it out, tough love, tough nut, tough pitch, tough row to hoe
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.