Hard-grained

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Having a dense firm grain.

    "hard-grained wood"

  2. 2
    Uninviting; dour.

    "A few sentences will suffice to indicate an idea of it. The pervading characteristic of all our Scottish songs seems to be that hard-grained, and not unfrequently sarcastic sagacity, which is the national mark, go where you will."

Example

More examples

"A few sentences will suffice to indicate an idea of it. The pervading characteristic of all our Scottish songs seems to be that hard-grained, and not unfrequently sarcastic sagacity, which is the national mark, go where you will."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.