How to Use hard up in a Sentence

hard up

adjective
  • Just slam those babies hard up against my nose and my worries are over.
    — Paul Daugherty, The Enquirer, 11 June 2021
  • State police said Texas had been pulling hard up the slope and continued the track up to a ledge.
    — Bill Leukhardt, Courant Community, 22 Dec. 2017
  • Again, at the moment there is no room at the inn, with the Heat hard up against the luxury tax.
    — Ira Winderman, sun-sentinel.com, 24 Aug. 2021
  • Chubb, making people miss and running hard up the middle, gets 6.
    — oregonlive, 13 Oct. 2019
  • They’ve been hit particularly hard up front on offense and need youth.
    — Brad Biggs, Hartford Courant, 25 Apr. 2024
  • She's worked tremendously hard up to this point with very little recognition.
    — Scarlett Newman, Teen Vogue, 12 Apr. 2019
  • People must have been hard up for entertainment 100 years ago.
    — Celia Storey, Arkansas Online, 14 June 2021
  • Apparently, people who rent airplanes are just as hard up as country club members.
    — Dustin Gardiner, azcentral, 27 June 2018
  • How to Do It Right Negotiate hard up front.
    — Lien De Pau, Forbes.com, 17 Sep. 2025
  • There are also holograms, too, if management is especially hard up for cash.
    — Craig Hlavaty, Houston Chronicle, 7 Feb. 2018
  • There are also holograms, too, if management is especially hard up for cash.
    — Craig Hlavaty, Houston Chronicle, 14 Mar. 2018
  • Accelerating hard up to those speeds led to many complaints in the Insight's logbook.
    — K.c. Colwell, Car and Driver, 20 Mar. 2020
  • But for the Heat, such marginal additions are not even a talking point at the moment, with the team hard up against the luxury tax.
    — Ira Winderman, Sun Sentinel, 16 Sep. 2022
  • His family was so hard up that the future president was forced to drop out of school after the second grade in order to make money shining shoes.
    — Jonathan Tepperman, Foreign Affairs, 14 Dec. 2015
  • For most of this past season, with the Heat hard up against the punitive luxury tax, the 15th and final roster spot was left vacant.
    — Ira Winderman, Sun Sentinel, 22 Apr. 2023
  • Their efforts beautified what would’ve otherwise been an empty lot, and provided a pantry for immigrants and working-class folks hard up for fresh food.
    — Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times, 26 Feb. 2021
  • Even after running hard up a hill for 5 minutes with a heart rate north of 180, somehow my legs still felt sluggish, and not just for the first rep, but all five of them.
    — Matt Bach, Men's Health, 25 Feb. 2023
  • Replacing Wooden, with his versatility along the line, is no simple task, but that’s part of why Auburn hit the portal hard up front.
    — Tom Green | [email protected], al, 27 Feb. 2023
  • But already hard up again the luxury tax, that does not appear to be an option, almost assuredly to open the regular season with 14.
    — Ira Winderman, sun-sentinel.com, 14 Oct. 2021
  • Obviously someone who loses their job and is really hard up for cash will give serious thought to canceling or pausing subscriptions.
    — Josef Adalian, Vulture, 10 Apr. 2025
  • However, the typical Planet Organic shopper isn’t likely to be that hard up.
    — Ryan Hogg, Fortune Europe, 22 July 2024
  • Cleveland Browns Stadium, hard up against the Science Center lawn, was plunged into darkness.
    — Jeffrey Kluger, TIME, 8 Apr. 2024
  • And what about the workers who will remain unemployed—those who won’t snap back to work because the businesses that employed them collapsed and because many of the ones left will be too hard up to hire again anytime soon?
    — Osita Nwanevu, The New Republic, 28 May 2020
  • David Shoemaker then got three straight groundballs, the first scoring a run and the second stranding runners on second and third and Penn leading 5-3. Samford’s Josh Rodriguez then bounced the ball hard up the middle, and Penn’s Ryan Taylor threw wildly to first.
    — Creg Stephenson | [email protected], al, 4 June 2023
  • Our good friend has been working hard up at Harvard this semester, and also providing Alabama with his football expertise back at home.
    — Joseph Goodman | [email protected], al, 14 Oct. 2021
  • The game warden who conducted my background check confided that the state is so hard up for hunte-ed instructors that hunting experience is no longer a requirement for teaching the class.
    — The Editors, Outdoor Life, 30 Oct. 2025
  • This letter descended to Charles Austen and thence to his granddaughters, who, hard up, sold it in the 1920s, part of a larger cache of relics and manuscripts.
    — Literary Hub, 4 Aug. 2025
  • The municipality, hard up against the Colorado River’s western bank, is surrounded on three sides by cropland.
    — The Washington Post, The Denver Post, 20 Aug. 2019
  • The surge of federal immigration agents in Minnesota over the past few months left many people not only traumatized but financially hard up.
    — Jeanne Sahadi, CNN Money, 24 Feb. 2026
  • An outside offer of the full midlevel could still potentially trump a return offer from the Heat, who are hard up against the punitive dollar-for-dollar luxury tax.
    — Ira Winderman, Sun-Sentinel.com, 3 July 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hard up.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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