"tough" in the noun sense
1. street fighter, tough
someone who learned to fight in the streets rather than being formally trained in the sport of boxing
2. hood, hoodlum, goon, punk, thug, tough, toughie, strong-armer
an aggressive and violent young criminal
3. bully, tough, hooligan, ruffian, roughneck, rowdy, yob, yobo, yobbo
a cruel and brutal fellow
"tough" in the adjective sense
1. tough
not given to gentleness or sentimentality
"a tough character"
2. rugged, tough
very difficult severely testing stamina or resolution
"a rugged competitive examination"
"the rugged conditions of frontier life"
"the competition was tough"
"it's a tough life"
"it was a tough job"
3. tough, toughened
physically toughened
"the tough bottoms of his feet"
4. sturdy, tough
substantially made or constructed
"sturdy steel shelves"
"sturdy canvas"
"a tough all-weather fabric"
"some plastics are as tough as metal"
5. ruffianly, tough
violent and lawless
"the more ruffianly element"
"tough street gangs"
6. bad, tough
feeling physical discomfort or pain (`tough' is occasionally used colloquially for `bad'
"my throat feels bad"
"she felt bad all over"
"he was feeling tough after a restless night"
7. tough
resistant to cutting or chewing
8. hard, tough
unfortunate or hard to bear
"had hard luck"
"a tough break"
9. baffling, elusive, knotty, problematic, problematical, tough
making great mental demands hard to comprehend or solve or believe
"a baffling problem"
"I faced the knotty problem of what to have for breakfast"
"a problematic situation at home"
Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)
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