hardboiled

hard-boiled

1. Literally, having reached a solid state through boiling, as of eggs. Mom is making hard-boiled eggs for breakfast.
2. Tough and dispassionate; hardened by experience. My brother, the hard-boiled police officer, becomes a gushing fool if you ask him about his baby daughter.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

hardboiled

mod. tough; heartless. Do you have to act so hardboiled?
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • hard-boiled
  • have brekkie
  • brekkie
  • take it or leave it
  • full English
  • (all) over again
  • over again
  • by the dozen
  • by the dozen(s)
  • by the dozens
References in periodicals archive
Chandler's abandonment of that story's conceit underscores some of the major conventions of hardboiled detective fiction: the stark individualism of the detective, his antagonistic relationships with women, and above all the codes of masculinity that are typified by detachment and violence.
Noir is generally considered a subgenre of the hardboiled story.
Women sometimes get overlooked when it comes to hardboiled noir fiction, but Dorothy B.
Though you wouldn't necessarily notice it at first glance, Easter's Christian significance is symbolized in the food brought to church for the blessing: Colored hardboiled eggs symbolize new life, for example; and a sugar or butter lamb represents Christ, the Lamb of God.
For example, Abbott invokes "capitalism-defeated masculinity, anti-immigrant paranoia, Cold War xenophobia, and the grip of post-World War II consumerism" as defining factors of hardboiled narratives (2) without investigating the particular ways these texts intervened in these larger cultural conversations.
These relationships, very similar to those involving Easy Rawlins, exemplify what Leroy Lad Panek identifies as the hardboiled protagonist's "intuitive reading of individuals and ...
"The hardboiled old men with hearts of stone must die," Lars von Trier declared in his first manifesto, twenty years ago, fresh from film school and ready to launch a Nordic nouvelle vague by killing the Father--or fathers, Ingmar Bergman in particular.
In other words, was the tradition of hard-boiled crime writing (most lucidly interpreted by Chandler in his novels and the essay "The Simple Art of Murder") about to take the big sleep?' Fans of this subgenre of mysteries and writers had been shocked throughout the 1980s by the cancellation of contracts for books in the hardboiled vein.
INGREDIENTS (SERVES4): 350g/12ozshortcrust pastry; 15ml/1 tbspFrench mustard; 450g/1lbpork sausagemeat; 1 onion,chopped; 5ml/1tspdried mixed herbs; salt and freshly ground black pepper; 2 hardboiled (hardcooked) eggs, sliced; 1egg,beaten
Cain's "Cigarette Girl." I must admit, I am not a fan of the suspense stories containing hardboiled private eyes and dames with gorgeous gains up to their neck, so I was very surprised and pleased with the range of plots and writing styles of the selections.
Smith's achievement by saying that Hardboiled couldn't have been written without Mechanic Accents, but it's obvious that Smith took her cues from the material in Denning's third and fourth chapters, chapters entitled" 'The Unknown Public': Dime Novels and Working Class Readers" and "The Uses of Literacy: Class, Culture, and Dime Novel Controversies," respectively.
Indeed, Cohen traces the key features of the two main detective strands, which he calls the 'classical' and the 'hardboiled', back to William Godwin's Caleb Williams of 1794.
Showing up halfway through the film, she plays Rita Pompano, a hardboiled detective investigating the murder of a prominent Los Angeles PR honcho (believe it or not, Don Johnson) and tracking an array of sexy, sinister suspects.
With Once a Thief, Toronto-based Alliance Communications has expanded its collaboration with famed Hong Kong director John Woo (Hardboiled) to develop all areas of production, including features and a series for TV.