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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
hard-pressed
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ The clinic provides help for hard-pressed families with young children.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Alternatively, a hard-pressed sector may seek to persuade its government to invoke anti-dumping measures.
▪ Finally, I think the tests will simply overburden an already hard-pressed system, and prove unworkable.
▪ For hard-pressed business people, courses will run during the weekend.
▪ Funding the pay rise will be more difficult and we fear that hard-pressed services will suffer further.
▪ Pity, therefore, the hard-pressed driver of the Sauber-Mercedes.
▪ They were hard-pressed even to get a hotel room.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
hard-pressed

hard-pressed \hard-pressed\ adj. facing or experiencing trouble or difficulty; as, financially hard-pressed Mexican hotels are lowering their prices; they were hard-pressed to find a substitute on short notice; -- see distressed[1].

Syn: distressed, hard put, in a bad way(predicate), in trouble(predicate).

Wiktionary
hard-pressed

a. 1 (context idiomatic usually with to-infinitive English) Barely able. Having difficulty doing something. 2 (context idiomatic English) Experiencing financial difficulty or difficulty in surviving. alt. 1 (context idiomatic usually with to-infinitive English) Barely able. Having difficulty doing something. 2 (context idiomatic English) Experiencing financial difficulty or difficulty in surviving.

WordNet
hard-pressed

adj. facing or experiencing financial trouble or difficulty; "the troubled car industry"; "distressed companies need loans and technical advice"; "financially hard-pressed Mexican hotels are lowering their prices"; "we were hard put to meet the mortgage paymentng"; "it was apparent that the magazine was in trouble"; "found themselves in a bad way financially" [syn: distressed, hard put, in a bad way(p), in trouble(p)]

Usage examples of "hard-pressed".

Sunbright was hard-pressed to beat them back, both from himself and from the chunky Candlemas, whom the barbarian considered helpless.

Before her, too hard-pressed to look up, Collum and Brandl seemed not to have noticed Maruha yet.

There were infinitesimal differences about each of them, and there was an aura of easygoing good nature about Victoria that more than bordered on mischief, and yet one would have been hard-pressed to tell them apart if one had to.

Ennet House in Enfield and be hard-pressed to spit in any direction without hitting some AA venue nearby.

On a Saturday night you could stand on the roof of Ennet House in Enfield and be hard-pressed to spit in any direction without hitting some AA venue nearby.

An entire battalion of nitpickers and fussbudgets would be hard-pressed to find a speck of dust in this room.

The landers held enough steel alloys, but a primitive smithy would be hard-pressed to reach temperatures high enough to melt or cast them.

Of these we shall only describe here the exploits of the fine force of cavalry which, after a ride of a hundred miles, broke out of the heart of that reddish dustcloud and swept the Boer besiegers away from hard-pressed Kimberley.

Still, Catti-brie was hard-pressed, indeed, overmatched, by her opponent this day.

Because they involved simple transmission-ready photography instead of computer imaging and enhancement, the Tableaux could be mass-produced and commensurately priced, and for a brief time they helped ease the tension between the high cost of enhanced body-masking and the monstrous aesthetic pressures videophony exerted on callers, not to mention also providing employment for set-designers, photographers, airbrushers, and infomercial-level celebrities hard-pressed by the declining fortunes of broadcast television advertising.

Even the merged magic of all three Archimages would be hard-pressed to break die Star Man's volition, so powerfully attuned has he become to his abominable goal.

Turning suddenly and stretching his long legs into nearly a run, he crossed the avenue so sharply I was hard-pressed to keep up with him.

Hard-pressed navy engineers had plugged the standard components together, completing several hundred each day.

That puts us in Gedemondas, a hex in which we Yaxa will be hard-pressed to operate, but one in which a Lamotien-supplemented Dasheen force will be highly effective.

More logically, he surmised, they were probably flying cover while they practiced other, more depredating activities to come, although he was hard-pressed to fathom what they might be.