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.
Though the film is framed as a conspiracy thriller, Spielberg’s essential goodheartedness continually peeks out, as if he can only play at being hard-bitten for so long.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2026
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
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
A lieutenant had approached, an older man, hard-bitten by years in the desert, with a full beard—save for a large, horizontal scar across his left cheek.
From "The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams" by Daniel Nayeri
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