What's the difference between brutal and hard?

Brutal


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to a brute; as, brutal nature.
  • (a.) Like a brute; savage; cruel; inhuman; brutish; unfeeling; merciless; gross; as, brutal manners.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The arrest of the Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent Jason Rezaian and his journalist wife, Yeganeh Salehi, as well as a photographer and her partner, is a brutal reminder of the distance between President Hassan Rouhani’s reforming promises and his willingness to act.
  • (2) The analysis of the causes of hunger current in the 1970's can be summarized somewhat brutally as follows.
  • (3) Their brutality seems to have been fairly even-handed, or if it wasn't, the men surely suffered enough not to be presented as the winners of the atrocity.
  • (4) It hasn't been so exposed to the brutal learning culture Scotland Yard has been through with cases like Stephen Lawrence and Victoria Climbié.
  • (5) My whole world was turned upside down by the brutality of it.
  • (6) The Florida senator said: “This simplistic notion that ‘leave Assad there because he’s a brutal killer, but he’s not as bad as what’s going to follow him’ is a fundamental and simplistic and dangerous misunderstanding of the reality of the region.” It’s unclear though how much the actual debate about policy between the two senators stood out from the political carnival surrounding them.
  • (7) "They have a retaliatory doctrine," Salah argued of the police, whose brutality was a major cause of Egypt's 2011 uprising , but who have become more popular after backing Morsi's overthrow.
  • (8) Comic writing can be a brutal, unforgiving business, yet it can produce great and multi-layered prose, combining comedy, pathos and satire.
  • (9) "It's horrible and brutal to be that far back and searching for those gears and they're not there," O'Hare admitted.
  • (10) The Shah's secret police – Savak – became increasingly brutal, ultimately detaining without trial and torturing tens of thousands of Iranian citizens.
  • (11) These are the first western depictions of our animals, and what they represent are the inception of the specific cultural politics which your nation forced on my continent, its land and its people with unhesitating colonial brutality.
  • (12) Coming shortly after the regime's successful third nuclear weapons test, Rodman's public declaration that he was Kim's "friend for life ", and the young premier's ability to parade his western visitors on state media, angered critics who argued that the country's ghastly poverty and brutal human rights violations were inadequately reflected.
  • (13) The pro-free-market newspaper soon fell victim to brutal market forces.
  • (14) Zhang Gaoping, 47, told state media that he and his nephew were subject to seven days of brutal interrogation before trial – sleep deprivation, starvation, cigarette burns.
  • (15) Onset is generally brutal, as in acute enteritis or an extradigestive infection (ENT...) but persists, or else, more often, the syndrome appears insidiously over several days.
  • (16) As the brutality of the crackdown increased, there were reports of some small-scale defections within the Syrian army.
  • (17) Police said the brutal injuries to the boy clearly caused his death and investigators were not looking for anyone else.
  • (18) If so, they will be more jihadist, sectarian, brutal and anti-western when they take Damascus.
  • (19) Concentrate on the way he constructs the space of an interior or orchestrates a sensual camera movement that he invented himself - the camera gliding on unseen tracks in one direction while uncannily panning in another direction - and you perceive how each Dreyer film almost brutally reconstructs the universe rather than accepting it as a familiar given.
  • (20) Everything that was, is more: brutality, injustice, poverty, anger; but also clarity, knowledge, understanding and, possibly, determination.

Hard


Definition:

  • (superl.) Not easily penetrated, cut, or separated into parts; not yielding to pressure; firm; solid; compact; -- applied to material bodies, and opposed to soft; as, hard wood; hard flesh; a hard apple.
  • (superl.) Difficult, mentally or judicially; not easily apprehended, decided, or resolved; as a hard problem.
  • (superl.) Difficult to accomplish; full of obstacles; laborious; fatiguing; arduous; as, a hard task; a disease hard to cure.
  • (superl.) Difficult to resist or control; powerful.
  • (superl.) Difficult to bear or endure; not easy to put up with or consent to; hence, severe; rigorous; oppressive; distressing; unjust; grasping; as, a hard lot; hard times; hard fare; a hard winter; hard conditions or terms.
  • (superl.) Difficult to please or influence; stern; unyielding; obdurate; unsympathetic; unfeeling; cruel; as, a hard master; a hard heart; hard words; a hard character.
  • (superl.) Not easy or agreeable to the taste; stiff; rigid; ungraceful; repelling; as, a hard style.
  • (superl.) Rough; acid; sour, as liquors; as, hard cider.
  • (superl.) Abrupt or explosive in utterance; not aspirated, sibilated, or pronounced with a gradual change of the organs from one position to another; -- said of certain consonants, as c in came, and g in go, as distinguished from the same letters in center, general, etc.
  • (superl.) Wanting softness or smoothness of utterance; harsh; as, a hard tone.
  • (superl.) Rigid in the drawing or distribution of the figures; formal; lacking grace of composition.
  • (superl.) Having disagreeable and abrupt contrasts in the coloring or light and shade.
  • (adv.) With pressure; with urgency; hence, diligently; earnestly.
  • (adv.) With difficulty; as, the vehicle moves hard.
  • (adv.) Uneasily; vexatiously; slowly.
  • (adv.) So as to raise difficulties.
  • (adv.) With tension or strain of the powers; violently; with force; tempestuously; vehemently; vigorously; energetically; as, to press, to blow, to rain hard; hence, rapidly; as, to run hard.
  • (adv.) Close or near.
  • (v. t.) To harden; to make hard.
  • (n.) A ford or passage across a river or swamp.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Lucy and Ed will combine coverage of hard and breaking news with a commitment to investigative journalism, which their track record so clearly demonstrates”.
  • (2) Sierra Leone is one of the three West Africa nations hit hard by an Ebola epidemic this year.
  • (3) Topical and systemic antibiotic therapy is common in dermatology, yet it is hard to find a rationale for a particular route in some diseases.
  • (4) Given Australia’s number one position as the worst carbon emitter per capita among major western nations it seems hardly surprising that islanders from Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu and other small island developing states have been turning to Australia with growing exasperation demanding the country demonstrate an appropriate response and responsibility.
  • (5) They had learned through hard experience what Frederick Douglass once taught -- that freedom is not given, it must be won, through struggle and discipline, persistence and faith.
  • (6) In 60 rhesus monkeys with experimental renovascular malignant arterial hypertension (25 one-kidney and 35 two-kidney model animals), we studied the so-called 'hard exudates' or white retinal deposits in detail (by ophthalmoscopy, and stereoscopic color fundus photography and fluorescein fundus angiography, on long-term follow-up).
  • (7) It is a moment to be grateful for what remains of Labour's hard left: an amendment to scrap the cap was at least tabled by John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn but stood no chance.
  • (8) She stopped working only when the pain made it hard for her to get to work.
  • (9) He was reclusive, I know that, and he was often given a hard time for it.
  • (10) This defeat, though, is hardly a good calling card for the main job.
  • (11) Since this test is easily performed and hardly stresses the patient, it should routinely be the initial one for the diagnosis of renal osteopathy.
  • (12) Never become so enamored of your own smarts that you stop signing up for life’s hard classes.
  • (13) But I don't wish to be too hard on the judge for not taking that view.
  • (14) Our campaign has been going for some time and each step in our progress has been hard won, by campaigners paid and volunteer alike.
  • (15) I am rooting hard for you.” Ronald Reagan simply told his former vice-president Bush: “Don’t let the turkeys get you down.” By 10.30am Michelle Obama and Melania Trump will join the outgoing and incoming presidents in a presidential limousine to drive to the Capitol.
  • (16) All the same, it's hard to approach the school, which charges nearly £28,000 for boarders and nearly £19,000 for day girls and is sometimes called "the girls' Eton", without a few prejudices.
  • (17) Governmental officials as well as medical scientists in Taiwan have worked hard in recent years to develop and to implement various measures, such as prenatal diagnosis and neonatal screening, to lower the incidence of hereditary diseases and mental retardation in the population.
  • (18) Cooper, who was briefly a social worker in Los Angeles, also suggests working hard to build a rapport with colleagues in hotdesking situations.
  • (19) Critics of wind power peddle the same old myths about investment in new energy sources adding to families' fuel bills , preferring to pick a fight with people concerned about the environment, than stand up to vested interests in the energy industry, for the hard-pressed families and pensioners being ripped off by the energy giants.
  • (20) The spirit is great here, the players work very hard, we kept the belief when we were in third place and now we are here.