A.Word.A.Day --hardfisted

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Today's Word

hardfisted

PRONUNCIATION:

(HARD-fis-tid)

MEANING:

adjective:
1. Stingy.
2. Tough, aggressive, or ruthless.
3. Having hands made rough by labor: hardhanded.

ETYMOLOGY:

From hard + fisted, from Old English fyst (fist). Earliest documented use: 1612.

USAGE:

“Callovan inherited his wealth from his hard-fisted old father.”
Francis Clement Kelley; The City and the World and Other Stories; Extension Press; 1913.

“The plains were crawling with rough, hardfisted men, who had been weaned on skinned knuckles and a swift kick to the balls.”
Matt Braun; Cimarron Jordan; Pocket Books; 1975.

See more usage examples of hardfisted in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs. -Daniel J Boorstin, historian, professor, attorney, and writer (1 Oct 1914-2004)

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