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
He is hard-bitten by reality in these games, after all.
From BBC • Dec. 14, 2024
Cleo is “such an Artful Dodger character — pretty hard-bitten, pretty cynical, not sentimental,” Jonas Pate says.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 27, 2023
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
Poor darling Briony, the softest little thing, doing her all to entertain her hard-bitten wiry cousins with the play she had written from her heart.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
From Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.
