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
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
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
From Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.
