Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to bully, to treat severely.

1960		E. Loomis Heroic Love 165: Come on, Sarge, le’me sit in [...] Don’t hard-ass me, Sarge.
1970		D. Ponicsan Last Detail 142: Do you think we’re gonna stand here and be hard-assed because some dude in Norfolk forgot to endorse our orders?
1971		F. Hilaire Thanatos 89: Be nice, smile [...] Hard-ass them, and you’re in trouble.
1981		B. Hathaway World of Hurt 127: All he did was hard-ass you [HDAS].

2. to endure, to tough it out.

1955		(con. 1939–45) J. Klaas Maybe I’m Dead 41: He managed to hard-ass it more than a hundred miles over the mountains into Czechoslovakia before the Gestapo caught him.
1967		M. Braly On the Yard (2002) 10: You did it [i.e. a sentence] the easiest way you could and hard-assed the difference.