(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.
Taskmaster
Definition:
(n.) One who imposes a task, or burdens another with labor; one whose duty is to assign tasks; an overseer.
Example Sentences:
(1) Despite his gentle demeanour, the 52-year-old director can be a taskmaster on set, according to colleagues.
(2) Dimon, the charismatic leader of the bank, had enjoyed a reputation as a tough, strict taskmaster, the kind of CEO every bank should have.
(3) When asked if she drives the culture of the warehouse, Byers says: “I don’t run the warehouse, I run the retail.” She rejects suggestions that she is a hard taskmaster.
(4) Four months and two weeks had elapsed since the German chancellor Angela Merkel , ignoring the din of demonstrators and helicopters roaring overhead, had sought to convey, her eyes flashing this way and that, an essential fact: that she had come to Greece "not as a taskmaster but as a friend to listen and be informed".
(5) You can imagine Anderson as something of a taskmaster.
(6) Michael is a pretty hard taskmaster - they wouldn't survive if they weren't any good."
(7) For Felix Magath, that notoriously tough taskmaster, to grant his players two days off is a measure of the significance of this victory after Fulham pulled to within five points of Norwich City, whom they host next week, following Hugo Rodallega's winner four minutes from time.
(8) Felix Magath, the alleged hard taskmaster, failed to get his team playing anywhere near his demands.
(9) "I have not come as a taskmaster," she said, her eyes elevated towards the room's ornate sunlit ceiling as if focusing on some indefinable spot.
(10) Medicine is a hard taskmaster but made worse by those around you who see you as a threat that rocks the hierarchy where everyone should know their place,” an anonymous hospital consultant says in response to the results of the Guardian survey.
(11) Having been handed power unexpectedly early, Kim may have felt conflicting emotions: one, the urge to be as good or better than his unyielding taskmaster dad; the other, a crippling fear of failure, of being inadequate to the task.
(12) The agency, as she describes it, is a hard taskmaster.
(13) But if you know of any stories like those reported, I want you to escalate to HR … our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.” It has been known for some time that Amazon is often a tough taskmaster.
(14) TMZ on Christian Bale's expletive-laden rant According to Citron, Levin was a hard taskmaster who would work all hours.
(15) That need for control made him a demanding taskmaster.
(16) Rushdie himself briefly resembled the Soviet taskmaster when he suggested that John Updike should "stay in his parochial neighbourhood and write about wife-swapping, because it's what he can do".
(17) Even though Hanks achieved his greatest career success appearing in dramas in the 90s, such as Apollo 13 and winning his Oscars for (in typical Oscars style) his two worst films, Philadelphia and Forrest Gump , as well as appearing in romcoms ( Sleepless in Seattle , You've Got Mail ) written and directed by Nora Ephron ("She was a taskmaster, but gentle – I wish I was making a movie with Nora tomorrow"), I personally will always have a soft spot for his 80s comedic performances.
(18) And whatever the supposed egalitarianism of the recording process, you feel that White must have been a hard taskmaster to the other three members of the Dead Weather, demanding they come up with ideas and push songs into new directions in the same way he demands of himself.
(19) This is the German’s default mode during games: a waving, berating, demanding taskmaster.
(20) She’s not a hard taskmaster and I think he seems to like that.” Mauresmo has worked hard on Murray’s self-belief, and was instrumental in his decision to play a punishing schedule of tournaments during the autumn to haul his world ranking, which had sunk following back surgery a little over a year ago, back into the top 10 (“I wanted him to feel what it was like to win tournaments again,” she said).