hard as brazil

English

Etymology

Referencing the hardness of brazilwood.

Adjective

hard as brazil (not comparable)

1. (simile, dialectal, archaic) Extremely hard.
   • 1842 June, Edward Daniell, “The Old Coffer”, in The Court Magazine & Monthly Critic, volume IX, London: Dobbs & Co, →OCLC, page 431:

     Why, the wood 's as hard as Brazil! He must have spent weeks and weeks about it, let alone the cleverness of thing. Our carpenters would find it a job to make another sich a one; it ought fetch sum'mut homesomdever.

   • 1894 October 6, R. Davies, quotee, “Literary Gossip”, in The Athenæum, number 3493, page 459, column 1:

     Mr. R. Davies writes from Warrington: […] any hard wood described as being as 'hard as Bràzil'; and so on, though these old provincialisms are fast dying out before the schools of to-day.

   • 1901 August 24, “Wiltshire Words”, in Literature, number 201, London: The Times, page 191, column 1:

     It was but last Night that, the Supper not being to madam's liking, she found the Mutton as sour as a wig, and the Potatoes as hard as Brazil; and she told me afterwards that she should never endure the Cook-maid, though the Wench had been as fess as Cox's pig to enter her service.

References

• “as hard as brazil” under “brazil, n.¹”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.