tough guy n.
1. (orig. US, also tough monkey) a thug, a physically agressive man.
[ | ![]() | Cincinnati Enquirer (OH) 11 Dec. 1/3: ‘Gib me dat drawer wid de money in it,’ repeated the tough young guy]. |
![]() | Fort Scott Daily Monitor (KS) 18 Nov. 3/3: The ‘tough guy’ who advertised looked so natural that Officer Coe was about to arrest him. | |
![]() | Detroit Free Press (MI) 1 Apr. 4/4: Finnegan is what the sports term a ‘tough guy’. He rather enjoys acting as the receiver of a few wallops and wades into top-notchers in the same style. | |
![]() | Courts, Criminals & the Camorra 231: [W]e occasionally find an Italian, like Paul Kelly, leading a gang composed of other Italians, Irish-Americans, and ‘tough guys’ of all nationalities. | |
![]() | Enormous Room (1928) 195: A terribly tall, rather round-shouldered individual, of whom I said to myself immediately: ‘’By Jove, here’s a tough guy and a murderer all in one.’. | |
![]() | Iron Man 30: Coke Mason is just another newspaper tough guy. I could lick him myself. | |
![]() | Phenomena in Crime 204: Plentifully stocked with battalions of ‘tough guys.’. | |
![]() | Scrambled Yeggs 70: Tell Cookie there’s a tough guy, a gentleman named Sheldon Scott, wants to see him. | |
![]() | World of Jimmy Breslin (1968) 9: He’s yellow. Put the bull on these tough guys and they all bend in half. | |
![]() | Go-Boy! 36: Fellow prisoners will classify him as a wheel, a solid guy, a tough guy [...] or, if he is thought to be an informer, a rat. | |
![]() | After Hours 31: I can’t stand these touch guys walkin’ around. | |
![]() | Glitz 113: Kind of a tough monkey, huh? | |
![]() | Chopper From The Inside 13: All I ever learnt as a child and teenager was violence and hatred for would-be tough guys. | |
![]() | (con. 1973) Johnny Porno 40: You wanna cat like a tough guy, save it for the street. |
2. someone who cannot easily be checked or thwarted; note use as v. in cit. 1999.
![]() | Billy Bennett’s Third Budget 25: Jim was the tough guy of Texas, / Quick on the draw was Jim. | ‘A Tale of the Rockies’ in|
![]() | They Die with Their Boots Clean 29: Galileo would have been a Tough Guy to Barker because he couldn’t find it in himself to deny that the earth revolved around the sun. | |
![]() | Blackboard Jungle 98: Well, we’ll see about our good friend Daddy-oh, the tough guy. | |
![]() | Crime in S. Afr. 93: The activities of of these juvenile ‘tough guys’ [...] include theft, beatings and a number of vicious pranks. | |
![]() | All Bull 92: He was a tough guy in the real sense of the word. | |
![]() | Only Fools and Horses [TV script] I’ve always played the tough guy! | ‘Strained Relations’|
![]() | Love Is a Racket 231: I big-talked and tough-guyed my way through the day. |