Word.ws English Dictionary

hang tough

hang tough verb: to remain strong-willed or brave, especially when experiencing duress or adversity.

Verb

hang tough (third-person singular simple present hangs tough, present participle hanging tough, simple past and past participle hung tough)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To remain strong-willed or brave, especially when experiencing duress or adversity.
    • But Hoop Dreams isn't mainly about sport, or even about life and death in the inner city. It's about families hanging tough on nerve and prayer.1994 October 24, Richard Corliss, “CINEMA: False Hoops”, in Time
    Synonyms:
    grin and bear it, hang in there, suck it up, take it like a man, tough it out

Synonyms of hang tough

All synonyms of hang tough

Forms of hang tough

third-person singular presenthangs tough
present participlehanging tough
past participlehung tough
pasthung tough

Questions about hang tough

What does hang tough mean?
Hang tough means to remain strong-willed or brave, especially when experiencing duress or adversity.
What part of speech is hang tough?
Hang tough is a verb.
What is the past tense of hang tough?
The past tense of hang tough is hung tough.

Words near hang tough in the dictionary

  1. hang tight
  2. hang time
  3. hang times
  4. hang to
  5. hang together
  6. hang tough
  7. hang up
  8. hang up one's boots
  9. hang up one's fiddle
  10. hang up one's hat
  11. hang up one's spurs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hang tough (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-hang tough.ogg.

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