hard
part of speech
adjective (hard, harder, hardest); adverb (hard)
meaning for a pupil
1) Hard means firm and not soft, like a rock or a nut. tree →
2) Hard means difficult, not easy: a hard question. tree →
3) Hard as an adverb means with a lot of effort or force: work hard, push hard. tree →
4) Hard can also mean strict or unkind: be hard on someone. tree →
sense in the lessons
In maths: describes a task or a thing; hard and easy questions may be counted apart and added to the total. In science: diamonds are the hardest natural material; hard and soft materials. In life: hard work, a hard day, try hard. Phrases: work hard, try hard, hard work, hard to, hard-boiled egg, hard of hearing, hard drive.
examples
- The test had 10 easy and 5 hard questions. tree →
- He worked hard for 3 hours. tree →
- Hard candies cost 10 cents each. tree →
- The hardest puzzle has 500 pieces. tree →
- The ground was hard after the frost. tree →
- It is hard to wake up early in winter. tree →
- She tried hard and finished the race. tree →
- Diamond is very hard and can cut glass. tree →
- It rained hard all night. tree →
note
Opposite: soft (firm) or easy (difficult). Trap: «hardly» does not mean «in a hard way»; it means «almost not» (I could hardly see). A describing word; no clue to the operation. It may split items into groups.
In the corpora
- One worker alone has little power, but many together are much harder to ignore.
- A credit score is a rating of how reliably someone pays; missing payments lowers it and makes borrowing harder and dearer.
- Hard times are also when scammers strike, with messages that look urgent and real.
- A rough patch is a hard time in a relationship, with more arguing or unhappiness, and many couples come through it.
- A divorce can feel sad and also a relief, because a long, hard process is over.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «hard» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.