hard-nosed

To be hard-nosed is to be stubborn, unsentimental, uncompromising. The phrase is an Americanism, dating to the early twentieth century, but why hard-nosed? The answer comes from rifle ammunition.

In the late nineteenth century, the introduction of cordite and nitrocellulose gunpowder, in addition to be being “smokeless,” created higher muzzle velocities. To limit recoil, lighter bullets were used, but to prevent the smaller, lead projectiles from fouling the barrels of the rifle, the lead core of the bullet was surrounded by a “full-metal jacket” of harder material. But militaries found that full-metal-jacket ammunition was less effective at wounding and killing the enemy, so they began experimenting with ways to make soft-lead ammunition usable. The first of these were produced at the British Arsenal in Dum Dum, India in the 1890s, earning them the sobriquet of dum-dum ammunition.

The development of dum-dum ammo led to the coining of soft-nosed and hard-nosed in the context of rifle bullets. The earliest example of these terms that I can find is in the New York Sun of 24 January 1897:

Hunters have given the 30-calibre smokeless powder rifles a pretty thorough trial during the last year, and most of them are satisfied with its work on game in cases where a soft-nose bullet was used. A hard-nose bullet from the 30-calibre rifle, it appears, when it hits a deer passes through, leaving a “pinhole,” and causes the deer to run all the faster. With a soft nose bullet, that curls over on hitting the flesh, the effect is usually deadly.

The more figurative use is in place by 1913, when it appears in Kansas’s Emporia Gazette of 10 December of that year:

But while Emporia is as she is, the town always will be neighborly and hospitable, and never will get hard-nosed and haughty when a convention comes to town to eat Emporia groceries and make business for the Emporia laundries. We always are willing to spend the unearned increment of these occasions for rubber and gasoline to make the occasion festive and gladsome.

I would have guessed that the figurative sense of obstinacy and determination came out of the world of boxing, a metaphor relying on the ability of a good boxer to take a hit on the nose. But there simply aren’t examples of “hard-nosed boxers” or similar constructions to be found. Instead, searches turn up many examples of hard-nosed and soft-nosed used in terms of bullets.

Sources:

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. hard-nosed, adj.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2015, s.v. hard-nosed, adj.

 “Small Calibre Rifle Wounds.” Sun (New York City), 24 January 1897, Section 2, 6/6. NewspaperArchive.com.

“The Town ‘Done Noble.’” Emporia Gazette (Kansas), 10 December 1913, 2/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.