hard as brazil
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English
Etymology
Referencing the hardness of brazilwood.
Adjective
hard as brazil (not comparable)
- (simile, dialectal, archaic) Extremely hard.
- 1842 June, Edward Daniell, “The Old Coffer”, in The Court Magazine & Monthly Critic, volume IX, London: Dobbs & Co, →OCLC, page 431:
- Why, the wood 's as hard as Brazil! He must have spent weeks and weeks about it, let alone the cleverness of thing. Our carpenters would find it a job to make another sich a one; it ought fetch sum'mut homesomdever.
- 1894 October 6, R. Davies, quotee, “Literary Gossip”, in The Athenæum, number 3493, page 459, column 1:
- Mr. R. Davies writes from Warrington: […] any hard wood described as being as 'hard as Bràzil'; and so on, though these old provincialisms are fast dying out before the schools of to-day.
- 1901 August 24, “Wiltshire Words”, in Literature, number 201, London: The Times, page 191, column 1:
- It was but last Night that, the Supper not being to madam's liking, she found the Mutton as sour as a wig, and the Potatoes as hard as Brazil; and she told me afterwards that she should never endure the Cook-maid, though the Wench had been as fess as Cox's pig to enter her service.
References
- “as hard as brazil” under “brazil, n.1”, in OED Online
, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
