Talk:hard

Why does harden redirect here?

Fixed. --EncycloPetey 02:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

"hard by"

Does this cover the sense in "hard by" (meaning near, close)? Equinox ◑ 14:06, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

There are missing senses, for example the (nautical context?) degree sense as in "hard aport", "Turn hard left at the 5-way intersection.". MWOnline has a sense specifically for this and another one for "hard by". To me those senses seem the same. Even if there is a subtle distinction, I wonder whether there is much point to having it. That is, is the distinguishable sense of "hard" in "hard by" used in any other collocation? If not, maybe we should just have an entry for hard by. DCDuring TALK 16:25, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Cambridge Adv Learners Dict and Longmans DCE have hard by as adverb and preposition. It does seem to be in occasional current use in some newspapers. Might it be more prevalent in northern UK/Scotland?

Websters 1913 has a sense of "hard" (adverb) meaning "close, near" with a KJV quotation, which might be archaic. DCDuring TALK 16:53, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I've added the archaic and nautical sense to hard#Adverb and added senses to by#Adverb. Please inspect. I don't know about hard by. It doesn't seem archaic or nautical. As the applicable sense of "hard" is so rare in current speech outside of this usage, it is easy to see why the learner's dictionaries have hard by. DCDuring TALK 17:40, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. If hard can mean near, then hard by is analogous to (deprecated template usage) nearby, isn't it? Equinox ◑ 10:16, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

As you know, I ascribe significance to the difference between solid- vs spaced terms. IMHO, "nearby" doesn't require the justification that "hard by" would. In this case, "hard by"'s reliance on the archaic (or obsolete) sense of "near" seems to provide a justification for inclusion. I just didn't want to get ahead of myself by inserting it without some review of the premises. I was struck by the synonymy with "nearby" while doing this. Webster 1913 and Century provide some good perspective on older senses of the constituents of terms that have become more nearly set phrases than they were a century ago. DCDuring TALK 10:31, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

slowly and reluctantly

Besides the idiom die hard, Collins also offers the adverb:

slowly and reluctantly: prejudice dies hard

--Backinstadiums (talk) 18:20, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Which adjective sense for "a hard worker"?

Equinox ◑ 15:46, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

I suppose if we think of the -er as modifying the phrase ‘hard work’ then ‘hard’ would just mean ‘difficult’. OTOH ‘hard worker’ isn’t substitutable with ‘difficult worker’, which would suggest someone going on strike or arguing with the boss (no doubt for a good reason!). Overlordnat1 (talk) 22:24, 26 November 2023 (UTC)