Hardly fair-weather friends

Usage examples of diehards.

He was one of those preposterous phenomena which afflict the public once in a generation like an epidemic: he resembled no other performer, living or dead, and indeed there was a cadre of diehards which forlornly maintained that he was not a performer at all, but millions of 100 per cent American housewives would have taken a Trappist vow sooner than they would have missed their daily dose of Ziggy Zaglan.

There was some halfhearted booing from the diehards who never want a fight stopped, and one of Canelli's cornermen was insisting his fighter could have gone on, but Canelli himself seemed just as happy the show was over.

The Humphrey/Muskie axis had been desperately trying to put something together with aging diehards like Wilbur Mills, George Meany, and Mayor Daley -- hoping to stop McGovern just short of 1400 -- but on the weekend after the New York sweep George picked up another fifty or so from the last of the non-primary state caucuses and by Sunday, June 25th, he was only a hundred votes away from the 1509 that would zip it all up on the first ballot.