Someone who learned to fight in the streets rather than being formally trained in the sport of boxing

Usage examples of tough.

Although a successor Sunni general almost certainly would not be as willing as Saddam to take risks, interpret reality to suit his needs, and pursue an expansive foreign policy based on aggression, it would still be tough to accept what would look like a Saddam clone.

Morton on a long winding route through tough passes and clinging to contour lines along alarmingly steep slopes.

In brief, Alkine had an oddly bedraggled appearance yet a kind of provocative challenge like a bird of prey which had been in several tough fights but was quite prepared to take on another.

One wall, facing the borehole, was just a single huge pane of tough, anhydrous lunar glass.

Inside the wet tissues of the body, the two chemicals react, and they precipitate hydroxyl apatite, a tough, rigid, natural constituent of actual human bone.

She knew the arborescent grasses that yielded the longest and toughest fibers and these she sought and carried to her tree with the spear shaft that was to be.

I could, bandaged the injury with the cleanest fragment of shift, then tied the tough leaves to her feet like sandals.

The meat was very tough, as Bazil discovered when he bit into a thigh after cutting it free.

I should have known by knowing Bex that he was made of a tougher grit.

In his quiet way, he had already given some attention to Sir John Bittle, and he knew quite a lot about that unpopular man and his strongly fortified house with its garrison of toughs.

We would have a very tough time effecting a blockade two weeks from now, with the Russians already supplying Japan--it would mean a confrontation at sea with the Russians.

That blubber is something of the consistence of firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.

The rain still fell, and the ground was boggy, but by digging close to the tough roots of the ferns she was able to construct a satisfactory burrow.

With her hand-axe, she chopped away a section of the tough outer bark, then scraped off the inner cambium layer with a knife.

I had no time to spare in clambering up it, for I had to tear my heel out of the mouth of the foremost of them, and might have been dragged down by it had he not found my spur too tough a morsel for his chewing.