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

Dip into the dad-canon iconography of Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective series, of which more than 40 hard-bitten installments have been released since the early 1970s?

From New York Times • Jan. 13, 2024

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