Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to a great extent, in a zealous manner.

1727		J. Gay Beggar’s Opera II iv: Betty Doxy! Come hither, Hussy. Do you drink as hard as ever? You had better stick to good wholesome Beer; for in troth, Betty Strong-Waters will in time ruin your Constitution.
1801		C. Dibdin Yngr Song Smith 135: ‘Our captain,’ said he, ‘is what we tars call a good man; drinks hard, swears well, and fights better.’.
1824		W. Scott St Ronan’s Well (1833) 389: My dear John, you have drunk hard—rode hard.
1842		C.M. Kirkland Forest Life I 111: My husband took on dreadful hard upon that.
1861		D. Cook Paul Foster’s Daughter I 185: Well, I go and read with him all day—read hard—ever so, you know.
1881		Milan Exchange (TN) 28 May 1/4: Hang hard! I’m going to throw out the grapnel.
1890		B.L. Farjeon Mystery of M. Felix III 138: I did want ’ard to talk to ’im.
1907		‘O. Henry’ Trimmed Lamp (1916) 13: He isn’t a millionaire so hard that you could notice it, anyhow.
1918		‘Sapper’ Human Touch 160: ’Op it, yer bla’guard, ’op it ’ard!
1920		F. Packard White Moll 215: Say, you listen hard, Bertha!
1932		P.G. Cressey Taxi-Dance Hall 51: They were always well dressed, and treated me nicely; I fell for them [Filipinos] hard.
1938		R. Chandler ‘The King in Yellow’ in Spanish Blood (1946) 51: It flops here, sister, it flops hard.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 103: hard [...] quite a lot; often precedes ‘fat righteous’ ‘I dug you hard fat righteous, man!’.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 118: Outsized, red-faced American men doing some hard drinking.
1999		D. Looser ‘Boob Jargon’ in NZEJ 13 29: go hard v. 1. To do something on one’s own. 2. To display radical behaviour.
2024		D. Rucker Life’s Too Short 6: [T]hose days we played stadiums at night, night after night, and smoked and snorted and drank the rest of the time. We partied hard.

2. (US black) in an aggressive, hostile manner; intensely.

[1788		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd edn) n.p.: To dye hard, is to shew no signs of fear or contrition at the gallows; not to whiddle or squeak. This advice is frequently given to felons going to suffer the law, by their old comrades, anxious for the honour of the gang].
1859		H. Kingsley Recollections of G. Hamlyn (1891) 89: At Cambridge, for the first year, he was probably the noisiest man in his college, though he never lived what is called ‘hard.’.
1936		T. ‘O’Reilly Tiger of the Legion 153: [T]he girl was abusing the darkie pretty hard, and he was looking nasty.
1978		R. Charles Brother Ray 218: Well this woman and I hit it off right away. I dug her so hard.
1986		R. Hewitt White Talk Black Talk 117: Seh inna disya dance seh you smoke ganja ’ard.
1994		N. McCall Makes Me Wanna Holler (1995) 94: Babes flocked to guys who ragged hard. [Ibid.] 119: He’d cracked hard on my lady.
1998		Eble Campus Sl. Apr.
2006		C.W. Ford Deuce’s Wild 243: Tommy Mervin, the best ‘dozens’ player on my block came to my rescue when an older kid name Jared began hitting hard on my mother.
2014		Stormzy ‘Shut Up’ 🎵 All of my ex girls talk to me hard / Talk to my face, don’t talk to my palm.

3. very, extremely.

1850		N. Kingsley Diary (1914) 97: Mr. Hopkins is hard sick.
1924		G. Henderson Keys to Crookdom 412: Hard nicked – robbed of everything.

4. in a painful, problematic manner, e.g. of a prison sentence.

1894		J. London Tramp Diary in Jack London On the Road (1979) 48: If any Pinkertons or detectives are caught it will go hard with them.
1908		A.N. Lyons Arthur’s 220: It’d go ’ard if Yaller Boots there was to set about ’er, I give you my word.
1939		V. Cranton Keepers of the Desert 178: What a change again from the last time I travelled to Marseilles. Then I rode ‘hard’ in a train-omnibus. Now I lolled in luxury on soft cushions.
1953		K. Tennant Joyful Condemned 294: Mort Clipman was the one who was ‘doing it hard’.
1953		I. Hamilton Till Human Voices Wake Us 129: If i did a lagging as hard as that I’d never come back.
2021		C. Hammer Opal Country 55: ‘Before this latest little strike, he was doing it hard, just like us’.