as in poor
lacking money or material possessions
despite being undeniably hard up, they had too much pride to accept charity
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of hard up
How to Do It Right Negotiate hard up front.
—
Lien De Pau, Forbes.com, 17 Sep. 2025
Kai Jones does not have two-way eligibility, and that matters a lot for a team hard up against the luxury tax.
—Ira Winderman, Sun Sentinel, 14 Aug. 2025
This letter descended to Charles Austen and thence to his granddaughters, who, hard up, sold it in the 1920s, part of a larger cache of relics and manuscripts.
—Literary Hub, 4 Aug. 2025
After decades of bringing us the incredible shrinking transistor, chipmakers are now hard up against the limits of their printing technique: Trying to use today’s ultraviolet lasers to print the next generation of circuits would be like trying to trace a fine line with a preschooler’s crayon.
—IEEE Spectrum, 30 Dec. 2011
See All Example Sentences for hard up
Lien De Pau, Forbes.com, 17 Sep. 2025
Kai Jones does not have two-way eligibility, and that matters a lot for a team hard up against the luxury tax.
—Ira Winderman, Sun Sentinel, 14 Aug. 2025
This letter descended to Charles Austen and thence to his granddaughters, who, hard up, sold it in the 1920s, part of a larger cache of relics and manuscripts.
—Literary Hub, 4 Aug. 2025
After decades of bringing us the incredible shrinking transistor, chipmakers are now hard up against the limits of their printing technique: Trying to use today’s ultraviolet lasers to print the next generation of circuits would be like trying to trace a fine line with a preschooler’s crayon.
—IEEE Spectrum, 30 Dec. 2011
See All Example Sentences for hard up
Recent Examples of Synonyms for hard up
Adjective
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The second didn’t go nearly as well for Bussi as Karlsson and Howden scored on two of the Golden Knights’ six shots in the period to tie the score at 3-3 heading into the third, the tying goal coming off a Seth Jarvis turnover and a couple of poor defensive plays by Sean Walker and K’Andre Miller.—
Michael Russo,
New York Times,
10 June 2026
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Heat radiates from the pages of this extraordinary novel about a poor family in rural Mississippi in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
9 June 2026
Adjective
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Transposing the book onto a contemporary setting, Jude’s take centers on an impoverished Romanian migrant, Gianina, played by a sensational Ana Dumitrașcu, who finds work as a housekeeper and au pair for a smugly bourgeois-bohemian couple living in Bordeaux.—
Christopher Vourlias,
Variety,
11 June 2026
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To ease the financial burden on the most impoverished, the government said tax exemptions would apply to micro-enterprises and those earning less than $680 a month.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
11 June 2026
Adjective
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With Ethan Hawke's newbie simmering against the go-for-broke finesse of Denzel Washington's very bad, no-good officer, Training Day revels in tension, with washes of blue and green augmenting scenes where Hawke is bullied into getting high.—
Eric Farwell,
Entertainment Weekly,
12 June 2026
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This week, Knicks fans had a big win after a big loss; fans of inflation were delighted and World Cup fans went broke.—
Holly J. Morris,
NPR,
12 June 2026
Cite this Entry
“Hard up.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/hard%20up. Accessed 15 Jun. 2026.
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