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
Old sceptics, hard-bitten by a quarter of a century of nothingness, were beginning to turn.
From BBC • Jan. 31, 2025
A hard-bitten New York intellectual of the old stripe, Gilman spoke with a smoker’s rasp, enjoyed a drink and comported himself like a rakish pirate in a denim jacket.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 14, 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
