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View synonyms for tough break

tough break



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Idioms and Phrases

Also, tough luck . A trying or troublesome circumstance, bad luck, as in He got a tough break when he was denied a raise , or Tough luck for the team last night . This idiom uses tough in the sense of “difficult,” a usage dating from the early 1600s. The variant is also used as a sarcastic interjection, as in So you didn't make straight A's—tough luck! A slangy variant of this interjection is tough beans , and a ruder version is tough shit . [ Colloquial ; c. 1900]

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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