hard-headed
/ˌhɑːdˈhɛdɪd
/adjective
Practical and realistic; not sentimental: a hard-headed businessman...
- I don't think many people are aware quite how much theatre design is a hard-headed practical matter.
- It radiates hard-headed realism, icy egoism and unsentimental calculation.
- I've come to cherish the hard-headed practicality of the hero's wife in Henry Handel Richardson's The Fortunes of Richard Mahony.
Synonyms
unsentimental, practical, pragmatic, businesslike, realistic, sensible, rational, tough, clear-thinking, cool-headed, hard-bitten, down-to-earth, matter-of-fact, no-nonsense, with one's/both feet on the ground;
shrewd, astute, sharp, sharp-witted
informal hard-nosed, hard-boiled
Derivatives
hard-headedly
- Keller plays the anti drug game hard-heartedly and hard-headedly, seeking the big win no matter what he must lose on the way.
- The book is a curious mixture of the Panglossian - the US as a kindly elephant, centre of the global ecosystem - and the hard-headedly critical.
- Any such definitive analysis, however, would need to respond, at the very least, both to his at once ‘avant- garde’ and hard-headedly commercial use of abstracted, deliberately over-stylised backgrounds and movements, and to the logical circularity which repeatedly dictates the emotional lives of his characters.
hard-headedness
- In his philanthropy, however, Soros epitomizes the rare combination of generosity and hard-headedness that is needed to build civil societies from the ground up.
- Here Giroux's hard-headedness works to another effect.
- American hard-headedness could be the antidote.