crack hardy

Verb

crack hardy (third-person singular simple present cracks hardy, present participle cracking hardy, simple past and past participle cracked hardy)

1. (Australia, New Zealand, idiomatic, slang) To keep a brave face, to suppress one's feelings, to grin and bear it.
   • He smiled gratefully to her for 'cracking hardy', pretending she was not tired when her back ached and her head swayed giddily on the long days, driving, and gazing through dust and blinding sunshine, over the ever-widening ever-distancing plains.1929, Katharine Susannah Prichard, Coonardo, page 139
   • In diagnosis, he had to discriminate, besides the disease, the human element; to spot the man who was only "fed up," the man seriously ill but "cracking hardy," and the man nearing his limit but not quite there within the stern purpose of Gallipoli.1930, Arthur Graham Butler, The Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914-1918, Volume 1, page 364