Stern, hard-hearted, unsympathetic; able to standhard blows like nails. Religious bigotry, straitlacedness, rigid puritanical pharisaism, make men and women “hard as nails.”
“I know Iʹm as hard as nails already; I donʹt want to getmore so.”—Edna Lyall: Donovan. chap. xxiii.
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