as in desolate
producing inferior or only a small amount of vegetation
it was hard to eke out even a bare existence on the hardscrabble lands
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Examples of hardscrabble in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Rose, a product of the city’s hardscrabble west side, was a man of average physical gifts who propelled himself to unparalleled athletic heights and a mythic status hard to imagine for a baseball player today.
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Brandon Harris, The New Yorker, 7 Aug. 2024
What makes the claim believable is its specificity — page numbers and all — and the fact Vance’s memoir was lauded as a heartfelt, unvarnished coming-of-age tell-all about his hardscrabble Appalachian childhood.
—Allen Salkin, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 July 2024
Justice Edward Panelli, who rose from a hardscrabble childhood in Depression-era Santa Clara Valley to the state’s highest court, died Saturday evening in Saratoga at the age of 92.
—Bay Area News Group, The Mercury News, 22 July 2024
His contemporaries were the likes of Saddam and of Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad -- military men from poor families and hardscrabble towns who fought their way to the top, riding the wave of revolutionary sentiment that swept the Middle East in the 1960s and 1970s.
—Mohamad Bazzi, Foreign Affairs, 21 Oct. 2011
See all Example Sentences for hardscrabble 
Brandon Harris, The New Yorker, 7 Aug. 2024
What makes the claim believable is its specificity — page numbers and all — and the fact Vance’s memoir was lauded as a heartfelt, unvarnished coming-of-age tell-all about his hardscrabble Appalachian childhood.
—Allen Salkin, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 July 2024
Justice Edward Panelli, who rose from a hardscrabble childhood in Depression-era Santa Clara Valley to the state’s highest court, died Saturday evening in Saratoga at the age of 92.
—Bay Area News Group, The Mercury News, 22 July 2024
His contemporaries were the likes of Saddam and of Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad -- military men from poor families and hardscrabble towns who fought their way to the top, riding the wave of revolutionary sentiment that swept the Middle East in the 1960s and 1970s.
—Mohamad Bazzi, Foreign Affairs, 21 Oct. 2011
See all Example Sentences for hardscrabble
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hardscrabble.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Hardscrabble.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/hardscrabble. Accessed 30 Oct. 2024.
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