hard time

English

Noun

hard time (countable and uncountable, plural hard times)

1. (colloquial, countable) Difficulties; a difficult time; trouble.

   They had a hard time putting the self-assembly furniture together without a manual.

   • 2011, Mark Lavorato, Believing Cedric:

     The day passed without further incident. As did the next. And then the next. Until, eventually, Agnes began to have a hard time believing that anything strange had ever happened at all.

2. (colloquial, uncountable) A prison term.

   Jack got hard time for his part in the robbery.

Derived terms

• give someone a hard time
• hard-times token

Translations

difficulties

• Arabic: please add this translation if you can
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 艱難時期／艰难时期 (jiānnán shíqī), 困難／困难 (zh) (kùnnan), 受罪 (zh) (shòuzuì), 麻煩／麻烦 (zh) (máfan)

• Finnish: hankaluudet pl, vaikeudet pl
• French: problèmes (fr) m pl
• German: schwere Zeit
• Hindi: please add this translation if you can
• Italian: please add this translation if you can
• Japanese: please add this translation if you can
• Korean: please add this translation if you can
• Russian: please add this translation if you can
• Spanish: mal trago m
• Ukrainian: please add this translation if you can

Further reading

• Jonathon Green (2024) “hard time n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Anagrams

• admireth