hard-boiled








adjective

  1. Cookery. (of an egg) boiled in the shell long enough for the yolk and white to solidify.
  2. Informal. tough; unsentimental: a hard-boiled vice-squad detective.
  3. marked by a direct, clear-headed approach; realistic: a hard-boiled appraisal of the foreign situation.
  4. (of detective fiction) written in a laconic, dispassionate, often ironic style for a realistic, unsentimental effect.

verb (used with object)

  1. to boil (an egg) until the yolk and white have become firm or solid.

adjective

  1. (of an egg) boiled until the yolk and white are solid
  2. informal
    1. tough, realistic
    2. cynical
adj.

also hardboiled, 1723 in reference to eggs, from hard + boiled. In transferred sense “severe, tough,” from 1886.

55 queries 0.623