hard knocks

Questions about hard knocks

What does hard knocks mean?

hard knocks means "a state of misfortune or affliction".

What is another word for hard knocks?

Close synonyms include adversity, hardship. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is hard knocks a common word?

hard knocks is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.