‘Have you ever noticed how all the truly bigoted expressions are blessed with hard consonants?’

‘Of course I knew the title of the anthem, but I have never been able to pronounce it: too many hard consonants in succession for my Latin vocal cords.’

‘Lindsay recently admitted she would never try hard drugs after seeing how they affected her father.’

‘There is fear its use will spread among the thousands of hard drug addicts in Dublin.’

‘only a handful are hard enough to join the SAS’

‘Vince is a hard player, a good talker, and unlike most good talkers, is a most positive doer.’

‘it’s been a long, hard winter’

‘Experts at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh had been fearing a hard winter.’

‘efforts to turn psychology into hard science’

‘The hard sciences, for example, are at the cutting edge of economic development.’

‘hard facts about the underclass are maddeningly elusive’

‘I think the time has come to stop playing around and to seek out some hard information.’

‘The film was never shown in Britain, where hard pornography was banned in cinemas, though plenty of people saw it on pirate videos at home.’

‘Like other addictions, addiction to pornography reaches a point when even ‘hard’ pornography is not enough to produce the excitement the addict wants.’

‘Examples of hard commodities include platinum, copper and oil.’

‘It is a company built on hard assets.’

‘I would think you’d need hard radiation to initiate the cascade, but that the decay product would be softer.’

‘There’s no air, there’s hard radiation, there’s poison in the ground below you and of course, it’s between 100 and 150 degrees below in centigrade.’

‘a hard SF novel’

‘This isn’t a movie for fans of hard science fiction.’

‘hard water requires much more soap, shampoo, or detergent than soft water’

‘I live in a hard water area and am concerned about the build-up of scale in the central heating system.’

‘If your wine is too hard, too tannic, too acidic, snap the pouring unit onto your bottle, pour the wine through it, and it will be altered into a better state by the magnets inside.’

‘Too much tannin and the wine is hard and earthy.’

‘the hard left’

‘Thankfully, the moderate wing of the party split from the hard left and the Falklands War took care of the rest.’

‘times were hard at the end of the war’

‘he’d had a hard life’

‘this is a really hard question’

‘a hard whack’

‘The next hard blow to the head could be fatal, they said, and he must not fight again.’

‘the hard light of morning’

‘The house is cold and the car is cold and everything is cold, bright, hard and vacant.’

‘he can be such a hard taskmaster’

‘She snatched the boy by his collar on his tunic, and half-dragged him the rest of the way up the hill, her face hard.’

‘he’d been a hard worker all his life’

‘everyone has been hard at work’

‘airship-flying was pretty hard work’

‘it’s hard for drummers these days’

‘the slate broke on the hard floor’

‘rub the varnish down when it’s hard’

‘Beer is consumed as a typical light alcoholic beverage, while rum is the hard liquor of choice.’

‘Start guzzling hard liquor right off the bat and the binge is over before it started.’

‘the mortar has set hard’

‘This was a material that once it set hard would not soften under heat.’

‘put the wheel hard over to starboard’

‘It hit with a deafening roar, punching the ship sideways so violently that it rolled hard over to port.’

‘they work hard at school’

‘The mayor also urged the children to study hard to prove that they deserved the scholarships.’

‘it was raining hard’

‘He hit the ground incredibly hard and shattered both his legs but was otherwise unharmed aside from some bruising.’

‘Although The Hard is not a designated town centre it is recognised as a specialist retail and leisure area.’

‘Where hards form part of a name they often do so in combination with an adjective or a person’s name.’