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What is "hard-bitten"

Crossword clues for hard-bitten

hard-bitten
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
hard-bitten
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a hard-bitten detective
▪ Jensen's experience in prison left him hard-bitten, cynical, and ruthless.
▪ Miss Davies is not really the tough, hard-bitten businesswoman that she appears to be.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ He said he adored hard-bitten policemen.
▪ Not one of them's a hard-bitten tom, the kind you'd find on the streets.
▪ That was hard-bitten, hard-nosed, hard-drinking newshound Edgar Allan Poe.
▪ The hard-bitten men round the table knew better than to make that mistake.
▪ Very few teachers are irredeemable, however hard-bitten they may appear.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
hard-bitten

hard-bitten \hard-bitten\ hard-boiled \hard-boiled\adj. not given to sentimentality or gentleness; -- of people; as, a hard-bitten character.

Syn: pugnacious, tough.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
hard-bitten

"tough, tough in a fight," literally "given to hard biting," 1715, originally of dogs, from hard + bitten, with the past participle used actively (as in ill-spoken).

Wiktionary
hard-bitten

a. callous and toughened by experience

WordNet
hard-bitten

adj. tough and callous by virtue of experience [syn: hard-boiled, pugnacious]

Usage examples of "hard-bitten".

But what she sawin those narrow features was a kind of hard-bitten integrity incongruousin an outlaw.

On the platform stood a hard-bitten piano, three chairs and a table bearing the insignia of all British gatherings, a carafe of untempting water and a tumbler.

Smithback tried to maintain the hard-bitten reportorial look he cultivated in instances like these.

The attackers were five to one, and the five were soldiers of De Wet, the hard-bitten veterans of a hundred encounters.

What worried Jack were the occasional tales of the depredations of bushrangers, some of them almost gentlemanly in their concern for the welfare of ladies, others hard-bitten criminals escaped from the high security penitentiary at Port Arthur and Eaglehawk Neck in the south east.

Blade said, scanning the row of soldiers as he passed them, registering their clean, neat white uniforms and white parkas, their hard-bitten visages, and their recent-vintage assault rifles.

Which had been great enough that even such hard-bitten revolutionists as Jeremy and Donald had clearly been in something approaching a state of awe.

Our military history has largely consisted in our conflicts with France, but Napoleon and all his veterans have never treated us so roughly as these hard-bitten farmers with their ancient theology and their inconveniently modern rifles.

He was Germanic and hard-bitten, and he was president of the Medical Workers' Union - a union he had started himself in 1934, with four other hospital porters from Bellevue - and which was now a powerful, nut-cracking international with a billion-dollar fund and a two and a half million membership.

When the hard-bitten old mate walked over and put his hand against the coffeepot sitting on one burner of the primus stove, it was slightly warm to the touch.

Tough, aggressive, hard-bitten, handling their husbands like a road manager with a new pop-singer.