The word hardscrabble has appeared in 31 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Oct. 13 in “How Jesmyn Ward Is Reimagining Southern Literature” by Imani Perry:
Her next novel, “Salvage the Bones” (2011), returned readers to Bois Sauvage, introducing them to Esch, a pregnant and motherless teenage girl living with her father and three brothers when Hurricane Katrina upends their world. Esch and her family face the storm the way they face everything else in their lives: trying to make do after losing so much of what little they had. Ward brings the traumatic displacement of natural disaster into focus, describing hardscrabble living with a sensitive terseness. Her prose brings readers inside Esch’s perspective, protecting her against the voyeurism that stories of Black teenage mothers usually encourage, and granting her a vulnerable nobility.
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word hardscrabble in a sentence?
Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.
If you want a better idea of how hardscrabble can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com. You can also visit this guide to learn how to use IPA symbols to show how different words are pronounced.
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