| 单词 | hardscrabble |
| 释义 | hardscrabble (once / 26985 pages) adj Something described as hardscrabble is difficult and challenging. Adult success is a rare outcome for someone who lives through a hardscrabble childhood. During an economic depression, many people's lives become hardscrabble, as they fight to find work, or are unable to pay their bills without working two or three jobs. This sense of struggling just to metaphorically keep your head above water captures the meaning of hardscrabble. It's an early 19th century US invention, first written in Lewis and Clark's journals, and referring to an imaginary place "where a livelihood may be obtained only under great hardship and difficulty." WORD FAMILYhardscrabble: hardscrabbler USAGE EXAMPLESHere in the hardscrabble farming town of Sadki-Stroyevka, birds far outnumber people. New York Times(Dec 23, 2016) Star is not that show, but they share the same nugget of an idea: the hardscrabble life from which a star is born. Slate(Dec 14, 2016) The corner of the District he returned to was a hardscrabble patch of an ailing city tumbling toward the brink of bankruptcy. Washington Post(Nov 23, 2016) adj barely satisfying a lower standard the sharecropper's hardscrabble life Syn meager, meagerly, meagre, scrimpy, stingy deficient in amount or quality or extent |
| 随便看 |
|
英语词典包含147318条英英释义在线翻译词条，基本涵盖了全部常用单词的英英翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。