: marked by difficult or painful experiences or circumstances
For all of his gifts, Cabrera's greatest strength may be a toughness that came from his hard-knock life.Alan Shipnuck

Examples of hard-knock in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Joy Behar had a hard-knock time watching Whoopi Goldberg’s debut performance of Annie on Wednesday thanks to their fellow View cohost, Sunny Hostin. EW.com, 12 Dec. 2024 After depicting the arrival of space-faring nomads on a distant planet in January, her spring 2025 collection will be looking at the hard-knock life of the exploring settler in an unknown environment. Lily Templeton, WWD, 19 June 2024 This story of an orphan's hard-knock life is an optional add-on to a six- or seven-show Broadway series subscription. Jim Higgins, Journal Sentinel, 25 Mar. 2024 But here the tale being told is not wistful but dynamic, its nostalgia sharpened with hard-knock realities, and its sentimentality offset with humor, snap and darkness. Frank Rizzo, Variety, 22 Mar. 2024 Having spent over a decade playing troubled young women in films such as Atonement, Killer Joe, Afternoon Delight and Unsane, Temple had effectively established herself as a dramatic actress who could tap into the darkness of a hard-knock life many times over. Max Gao, Harper's BAZAAR, 13 Mar. 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1967, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of hard-knock was in 1967

Dictionary Entries Near hard-knock

Cite this Entry

“Hard-knock.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hard-knock. Accessed 22 Dec. 2024.

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