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say it: tuhf
tough is an adjective and noun meaning "not given to gentleness or sentimentality". It carries 12 recorded senses.
not given to gentleness or sentimentality
“a tough character”
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”
physically toughened
“the tough bottoms of his feet”
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”
colloquialism
resistant to cutting or chewing
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”
someone who learned to fight in the streets rather than being formally trained in the sport of boxing
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for tough come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.