How to Use hard-luck in a Sentence

hard-luck

adjective
  • Slot bemoaned the fine margins but there have been far too many hard-luck stories.
    — James Pearce, New York Times, 9 Feb. 2026
  • There’s some dark subject matter, and some hard-luck people on the fringes.
    — New York Times, 28 Apr. 2026
  • Leiter took a hard-luck loss for his gem as the Yankees wrapped up the title.
    — Jayson Stark, New York Times, 29 Sep. 2025
  • Burford has stepped in nicely for hard-luck left guard Ben Bartch.
    — Jerry McDonald, Mercury News, 20 Dec. 2025
  • Not after just two injury-riddled, hard-luck seasons.
    — Los Angeles Times, 9 Mar. 2026
  • Mikolas suffered a hard-luck setback in his lone meeting with Milwaukee this season.
    — Field Level Media, Reuters, 14 Sep. 2025
  • The latter more than held his own, though, allowing four hits and three runs across 6 2/3 innings before leaving as the hard-luck loser.
    — Joe Kozlowski, MSNBC Newsweek, 31 Oct. 2025
  • Pratt offers no prototypical hard-luck origin story.
    — Gary Baum, HollywoodReporter, 11 Feb. 2026
  • Both her audition and her callback had fallen flat, but the company must have figured that casting an amateur from hard-luck Butte as Lucetta would make good press.
    — Jonathan Franzen, New Yorker, 1 June 2026
  • The sudden ascent to stardom of freshman Alijah Arenas has injected new hope into a hard-luck season.
    — Ryan Kartje, Los Angeles Times, 16 Feb. 2026
  • For Coronado, the hard-luck loser was freshman Quinn Smock, who pitched six innings, allowed one unearned run on three hits and struck out seven.
    — Don Norcross, San Diego Union-Tribune, 24 Apr. 2026
  • The Oilers went back to Connor Ingram in goal after a hard-luck overtime loss for Tristan Jarry in Game 4.
    — Andrew Knoll, Oc Register, 29 Apr. 2026
  • Whether Rochdale are destined to join the list of hard-luck stories among the National League runners-up who fail to go up despite finishing well clear of the field, only the next couple of weeks will tell.
    — Richard Sutcliffe, New York Times, 26 Apr. 2026
  • Alex Wang was the hard-luck loser for Cistercian (3-13, 0-6) going 7 innings scattering 3 hits with an unearned run, 2 strikeouts and one walk.
    — Darren Lauber, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 8 Apr. 2026
  • All the usual fun Indy stuff is here – Nazis, treasured artifacts – though the bantering chemistry between Ford's hard-luck hero and Sean Connery as his grumpy dad is off-the-hook spectacular.
    — Brian Truitt, USA Today, 13 June 2026
  • Every small room sans closet in New York City requires a stand-alone alternative for surviving a hard-luck storage situation, and even ample hallways can benefit from a dignified wardrobe cabinet as a way to punctuate large spaces.
    — Julia Harrison, Architectural Digest, 17 Mar. 2026
  • The two formerly hard-luck performers, each previously divorced with children, blended their families and achieved enough professional success to open for Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder in Milwaukee.
    — Bryan Alexander, USA Today, 27 Oct. 2025
  • But nothing will change the chance that he was denied to celebrate with Team USA in the 2026 Olympics, or the parallels to one of the most famous hard-luck cases in sports history, Ralph Cox.
    — Mac Engel april 21, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 21 Apr. 2026
  • McConaughey plays hard-luck bus driver Kevin McKay, who's responsible for getting more than 20 kids and their teacher (America Ferrera) home while also worrying about his teenage son Sean.
    — Brian Truitt, USA Today, 5 Sep. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hard-luck.' 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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