adjective, noun, verb
adjective (tougher, toughest)
difficult
1 having or causing problems or difficulties:
a tough childhood / match * It was a tough decision to make. * She's been having a tough time of it (= a lot of problems) lately. * He faces the toughest test of his leadership so far. * It can be tough trying to juggle a career and a family.
strict / firm
2 ~ (on / with sb/sth) demanding that particular rules be obeyed and showing a lack of sympathy for any problems or suffering that this may cause:
Don't be too tough on him-he was only trying to help. * It's about time teachers started to get tough with bullies. * The school takes a tough line on (= punishes severely) cheating. * Local traders are calling for tougher action against vandals.
OPPSOFT
strong
3 strong enough to deal successfully with difficult conditions or situations:
a tough breed of cattle * He's not tough enough for a career in sales. * She's a tough cookie / customer (= sb who knows what they want and is not easily influenced by other people).
4 (of a person) physically strong and likely to be violent:
You think you're so tough, don't you? * He plays the tough guy in the movie.
meat
5 difficult to cut or chew
OPPTENDER
not easily damaged
6 not easily cut, broken, torn, etc:
a tough pair of shoes * The reptile's skin is tough and scaly.
unfortunate
7 ~ (on sb) (informal) unfortunate for sb in a way that seems unfair:
It was tough on her being dropped from the team like that. * (ironic) 'I can't get it finished in time.' 'Tough!' (= I don't feel sorry about it.)
toughly adverb
toughness noun [U]:
Her background had given her the physical and mental toughness that enabled her to fight for what she wanted.
IDIOMS
(as) tough as old boots
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for tough is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does tough appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — tough appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
