Green’s Dictionary of Slang

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

1611		L. Barry Ram-Alley IV i: I haue bin drinking hard [...] The law is not offended [...] Nor in an ale-house, haue I made me drunke.
1666		Pepys Diary 7 Mar. n.p.: [D]own to Greenwich to Captain Cockes, where dined he and Lord Brouncker and Matt Wrenn, Boltele, and Major Cooper, who is also a very pretty companion—but they all drink hard.
1667		Pepys Diary 14 Aug. n.p.: And so home again and to my business hard, till my wife came home.
1687		J. Phillips [trans.] Cervantes Don Quixote 259: [W]e have rid hard, fed hard, lain hard, and suffered all the Hards, but drinking hard, for I expect nothing but an empty Celler, and that’s the hardest thing of all.
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.’.
1817		‘Hibernian Apprehension’ in Maryland Republican 2 Sept. 4/1: An Irish gentleman visiting some friends in the North, was received with so much hospitality, and drank so very hard, that he departed in a shorter time than was expected.
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.
1855		‘A Tough Witness’ in Manitowoc Herald (WI) 13 Oct. 1/5: ‘Does he drink hard? ‘ ‘No. I think he drinks about as easy as any man I ever saw’.
1861		D. Cook Paul Foster’s Daughter I 185: Well, I go and read with him all day—read hard—ever so, you know.
1861		D. DeQuille ‘Letter from Dan De Quille’ in Cedar Falls Gaz. 20 Dec. in Curtis & Berkove Before the Big Bonanza (2015) 151: This [response] hit some of the audience, and the noisiest, too, pretty hard, and they ‘dryed’.
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.’.
1865		A. Doten Journals 1849-1903 (1973) II 10 Mar. 825: Boss talked hard at Charley & drew his revolver.
1884		A. Doten Journals 1849-1903 (1973) II 3 Jan. 1492: [I] hope those two chaps down there won’t think harder of me on that account.
1936		T. ‘O’Reilly Tiger of the Legion 153: [T]he girl was abusing the darkie pretty hard, and he was looking nasty.
1965		N. Hentoff Jazz Country 126: ‘Moses was so damn convincing [posing as a foreign diplomat] that when a cop came over, he began to look hard at the old cat, not at Moses’.
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. in a painful, problematic manner, e.g. of a prison sentence.

1843		W. Johnson diary 14 Apr. pub. as William Johnson’s Natchez (1951) 433: [Y]oung Winn and B. Winn had both promised to go on his Paper for the $290 but they returned and did not, which he thought hard of.
1849		A. Doten Journals 1849-1903 (1973) 1 13 Apr. 8: [B]oth irons went through his vitals and although we didn’t make him spout blood, yet it’s my private opinion that the old flour barrel fared hard.
1851		A. Doten Journals 1849-1903 (1973) 1 22 Dec. 103: The wounded [killer]hardly moved after he was run up and seemed to die easy, but the other one writhed about and seemed to die hard.
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’.

4. 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.