hard-bitten
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The cabbie, a hard-bitten postcommunist cynic, asks her if she’s visiting the archives “for work or fun.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 30, 2025
The British screen and stage star won an Emmy in 1975 for her portrayal of hard-bitten but ultimately kind-hearted maid Rose Buck in the TV drama about class in Edwardian England.
From BBC • Apr. 13, 2025
“He has become the go-to for people who see L.A. as a cynical, hard-bitten city,” Carlos Valladares, a film scholar and Los Angeles native, told me at Doyle’s reading event.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 10, 2024
Philip Marlowe, wearily played by Liam Neeson, is the hard-bitten private detective invented by Raymond Chandler in a series of stories and novels mostly published in the 1930s and ’40s.
From New York Times • Feb. 14, 2023
It was a strange opposition: the hard-bitten private-eye expression on the face of a girl wearing a uniform for private school.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
