adj.
Earning a bare subsistence, as on the land; marginal: the sharecropper's hardscrabble life.
n.
Barren or marginal farmland.
Dictionary:
hard·scrab·ble (härd'skrăb'əl) ![]() |
| Wordsmith Words: hardscrabble |
(HARD-skrab-uhl)
adjective
1. Yielding little for much effort.
2. Relating to a place that provides for bare subsistence.
Etymology
From English hard + Dutch schrabbelen (to scrape). Ultimately from the Indo-European root sker- (to cut) that's also the source of words such as skirt, sharp, scrape, screw, shard, shears, carnage, curt, and carnivorous
| Obscure Words: hardscrabble |
| WordNet: hardscrabble |
The adjective has 2 meanings:
Meaning #1:
yielding little by great labor
Synonym: poor
Meaning #2:
of a bare living gained by great labor
Synonym: marginal
| The Yearling (1994 Drama Film) | |
| Streator | |
| Keeping on (1981 Drama Film) |
Copyrights:
![]() | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Wordsmith Words. © 2009 Wordsmith.org. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Obscure Words. © 2008 by Michael A. Fischer http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd. Read more | |
![]() | WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more |
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