hard-boiled

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Ms. Medina, playing the flustered, overtaxed Tiphaine, is terrific, as is Ms. Arné, whose Lucie has to toggle from hard-boiled detective to strategy-free investigator.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 21, 2026

A hard-boiled egg is something else entirely: firm, portable, reliable, tucked into lunchboxes or sliced over a salad.

From Salon • Apr. 3, 2026

They added that while historically, visitors "turned up with hard-boiled eggs, more recently these are often switched for chocolate eggs to be rolled down the hill".

From BBC • Mar. 31, 2026

Crime fiction became more realistic, an approach presaged by Dashiell Hammett and other hard-boiled American writers in the 1920s.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 20, 2026

It was easy for me to imagine myself hunched over a keyboard, pounding out reams of deathless, hard-boiled prose.

From "Bad Boy" by Walter Dean Myers