1. Word finder
  2. Word definitions
  3. hard-nosed

Find the word definition

What is "hard-nosed"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
hard-nosed
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a hard-nosed negotiator
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Breeding programs for apes are a failure, and even hard-nosed experimenters will be turning the tide.
▪ For some one who worked in what she believed to be such a hard-nosed profession he retained a sensitive streak.
▪ Holbrooke has a justified reputation as a hard-nosed negotiator.
▪ Or the hard-nosed, insistent, tough approach.
▪ Philadelphia, which has a reputation for manufacturing tough, hard-nosed fighters.
▪ The book is certainly authoritative but may well daunt the uncommitted reader by its relentlessly hard-nosed factuality.
▪ There will no hard-nosed trade negotiations on this trip.
▪ To be very hard-nosed there is also a vested interest in running an efficient information service for a band.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
hard-nosed

hard-nosed \hard-nosed\ adj. facing reality squarely; guided by practical experience and observation rather than theory; tough and pragmatic; as, a hard-nosed businessman.

Syn: down-to-earth, hardheaded, practical, pragmatic.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
hard-nosed

"stubborn," 1927, from hard + nose (n.). Earlier of bullets or shells with hard tips, and of dogs that had difficulty following a scent. Not in common use before 1950s, when it begins to be used of tough or relentless characters generally (Damon Runyon characters, U.S. Marines, Princeton professors, etc.). Soft-nosed seems to have been used only of bullets.

Wiktionary
hard-nosed

a. 1 guided by practical experience and observation rather than by theory 2 (context idiomatic English) hardheaded, stubborn

WordNet
hard-nosed

adj. guided by practical experience and observation rather than theory; "a hardheaded appraisal of our position"; "a hard-nosed labor leader"; "completely practical in his approach to business"; "not ideology but pragmatic politics" [syn: hardheaded, practical, pragmatic]

Usage examples of "hard-nosed".

Jelly played the role of the ingratiating patch with enthusiasm and enormous skill, and Lisle Kelsko pretended to be nothing more than a hopelessly hard-nosed, hard-assed, narrowminded, amoral, authoritarian, coal-country cop.

Benjamin had not really intended it that way, had left the three viewgraphs out because they seemed a minor digression of little interest to the hard-nosed astrophysicists who made up most of the audience.

With the help of our hard-nosed expert, Lynn Davis, I hung tough on export controls and rebuffed the arms control demands by referring them to our staffs for further study.

Also, he was getting more and more con- earned a reputation as a hard-nosed squadron leader in the cerned about some of the methods the inner security peo- Vietnam war, flying F-6 Phantoms in close support of ple used.

He'd spent thousands of hours in the saddle in his forty-four years, the first few hundred under the merciless eyes of hard-nosed drill instructors.

To put it bluntly, both being hard-nosed businessmen, we hate to see a hot property like you being wasted.

It had a daily rodeo, of course, but it also had hard-nosed judgings of Herefords and Black Angus, and how a man’s bull did in such contests affected the success or failure of his ranch.

Eight hard-nosed and fearless litigators who spent their hours chewing up people.

I was a hard-nosed trustee, Judge, and never okayed a loan until I was certain that it was a distress case and not just a convenience to a lazy undergraduate.

They belonged to a pair of hard-nosed old thugs, who slept in their sidecars and insisted on having the tattooed skin peeled off their arms and legs as they were removed.