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Yielding little for much toil
Answer for the clue "Yielding little for much toil ", 12 letters:
hardscrabble
Alternative clues for the word hardscrabble
Word definitions for hardscrabble in dictionaries
Wikipedia
Word definitions in Wikipedia
Hardscrabble , or Hard Scrabble is a term used to describe rocky or poor quality land, as in the term hardscrabble farm . It is often used as a euphemism for any sort of hard working or poverty, as in hardscrabble childhood . A number of towns used this ...
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Word definitions in Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1804, U.S. colloquial, the name of an imaginary barren place "where a livelihood may be obtained only under great hardship and difficulty;" from hard + scrabble . First recorded in journals of Lewis and Clark. Perhaps the original notion is "vigorous effort ...
WordNet
Word definitions in WordNet
adj. yielding little by great labor; "a hardscrabble farm"; "poor soil" [syn: poor ] of a bare living gained by great labor; "the sharecropper's hardscrabble life"; "a marginal existence" [syn: marginal ]
Wiktionary
Word definitions in Wiktionary
a. Of or pertaining to land that takes a lot of work in order to farm and even then is not very productive.
Usage examples of hardscrabble.
There was something about the sound of a railroad whistle in the night to inspire young folk stuck with a heap of chores on a hardscrabble homestead to try their luck hopping freight trains to far places.
Gangly, gap-toothed, Inman seemed out of place in the hardscrabble town of 200, where his father operated the local Sinclair gasoline station.
He found gardening tools in the back seat, a level patch of hardscrabble off the access road to the Hollywood Sign and buried Mickey Cohen's would-be assassin in a plot about 4 by 4 by 4, working with an earth spade and grub hoe.