HARD KNOCKS Synonyms

• requiring full use of your abilities or resources

• stimulating interest or thought

• disturbingly provocative

• requiring more than usually expected or thought due; especially great patience and effort and skill

• not easy; requiring great physical or mental effort to accomplish or comprehend or endure

• hard to control

• characterized by effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort

• of textures that are rough to the touch or substances consisting of relatively large particles

• unpleasantly stern

• unpleasantly rough or jarring to the senses

• unkind or cruel or uncivil

• severe

• sharply disagreeable; rigorous

• rigidly accurate; allowing no deviation from a standard

• demanding strict attention to rules and procedures

• having or caused by an irregular surface

• of the margin of a leaf shape; having the edge cut or fringed or scalloped

• causing or characterized by jolts and irregular movements

• not shaped by cutting or trimming

• the part of a golf course bordering the fairway where the grass is not cut short

• with roughness or violence (`rough' is an informal variant for `roughly')

• with rough motion as over a rough surface

• (of persons or behavior) lacking refinement or finesse

• not quite exact or correct

• full of hardship or trials

• violently agitated and turbulent

• unpleasantly harsh or grating in sound

• ready and able to resort to force or violence

• not carefully or expertly made

• not perfected

• unpleasantly stern

• unkind or cruel or uncivil

• prepare in preliminary or sketchy form

• characterized by or performed with much energy or force

• taxing to the utmost; testing powers of endurance

• not given to gentleness or sentimentality

• physically toughened

• resistant to cutting or chewing

• someone who learned to fight in the streets rather than being formally trained in the sport of boxing

• an aggressive and violent young criminal

• a cruel and brutal fellow

• very difficult; severely testing stamina or resolution

• substantially made or constructed

• violent and lawless

• feeling physical discomfort or pain (`tough' is occasionally used colloquially for `bad')

• unfortunate or hard to bear

• making great mental demands; hard to comprehend or solve or believe

• a state of misfortune or affliction

• a stroke of ill fortune; a calamitous event

• a state of misfortune or affliction

• something hard to endure

• something that causes or entails suffering