hardboiled
hardboiled Lexical Profile
hardboiled Game Scores & Validity
• adjective
Cooked in boiling water in its shell until both the white and the yolk have completely solidified (of an egg).
"She sliced a hardboiled egg to add to the fresh spinach salad."
Tough, cynical, and unsentimental as a result of dealing with harsh realities; also designating a style of crime fiction featuring such characters and gritty realism.
"The novel features a hardboiled private investigator who navigates the corrupt underworld of the city."
Word Nuance & Usage
While the hyphenated form 'hard-boiled' is slightly more common in culinary contexts (describing eggs), the closed form 'hardboiled' is widely preferred when describing the subgenre of gritty crime fiction.
• Rhymes for hardboiled
Word Origin & Etymology
Formed as a compound of 'hard' and 'boiled'; the literal culinary sense dates to the 14th century, while the figurative sense of being tough, unsentimental, or cynical emerged in late 19th-century American slang (notably popularized by Mark Twain and later 1920s detective pulp fiction).