Phrases like hard pass and hard out will instantly make your English sound more American.
Welcome back to the Learn English podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
On today's episode.
I want to talk about some slang terms, some terms that maybe, if you're not from the United States or if you're not a native English speaker, you might not fully understand.
On today's episode, we're going to go over these slang terms.
I'll define them and give you some examples of how to use them, so you can understand a native speaker when they use these terms with you.
So if you're interested in learning more about these slang terms and how to use them, then follow along, because we're about to begin.
Before we get started, I want to remind you to look at the description of this podcast episode.
There you will find a list of the words and phrases that I used in the episode.
You can take them, study them, and build your English vocabulary.
So let's start with these slang terms.
All of these are going to have the word hard in them.
Let's just define what hard in general means.
It means durable, not flexible, tough, or hard to break.
Think of a rock or a diamond.
Those are things that are very hard, very difficult to break not something that you can really bend and they're very tough.
They're a very tough substance.
This word just gets used a lot in different slang terms.
If you know the pop star Rihanna, then you might know her song Hard.
What she means by this is that she's a very tough person and that she is very emotionally strong.
And one of the meanings of what she's saying is that she is a boss.
She is in charge.
She is very strong.
You don't want to try to trick her or play a joke on her or do something negative to her because she is such a strong person.
Now we can combine the word hard with other words and really have a lot of different meanings and a lot of different contexts that you can use things in.
So the first one that we're going to go over is one that I like to say it's one of my favorite slang terms and it is hard pass.
Now, you might think of a pass in a sporting event.
So in basketball or in soccer, football, the rest of the world calls it.
You pass the ball between players.
And if you do it really, really forcefully, that would be a hard pass.
But that's not what this means in slang terms.
So you might hear hard pass with a sporting event, but if you hear it outside of sporting events, it means something completely different.
Hard pass.
What that means in a slang term is to disagree with something or not want to do something.
This is one of my favorite things to say just because it's kind of funny.
It's kind of a funny way of saying it when you don't want to do something, when you're trying to decline an invitation that someone gave you.
So, for example, let's say that you have a friend who really wants to get in shape this year and they are going to start running every single day and their eventual goal is to run a marathon.
They might ask you to join them and they might say, will you join me in my running program?
Do you want to run a marathon with me?
And if you really do not like running, which I don't like running.
So if you're like me and you really don't like running, you can just say hard pass.
That means absolutely not.
I am not doing that.
Another example would be if you had a partner, if you had a girlfriend or boyfriend, you were dating them for a long time and then you broke up.
And the breakup was really traumatic.
It was really sad.
You were depressed.
It didn't end well.
The relationship did not end well.
Maybe a few months or maybe even a year down the line.
All of a sudden you get an invitation in the mail to your ex-partner's wedding.
The next person that they started dating, they fell in love with right away, and now they're getting married and they're inviting you to the wedding.
This is something that you definitely do not want to go to.
So if someone asks, are you going to go to their wedding?
You can say hard pass.
Absolutely not.
No chance that you are going to go to that.
Now, this is kind of similar to hard no.
No.
Hard no, though, is usually when you're just disagreeing with something.
Hard pass is usually when you're invited to something.
So a hard no can be used.
You could say hard no in those cases that you would say hard pass.
But you can also use it in other instances.
So, for example, if your friend who's running the marathon invited you to go run a marathon with them, you can say oh, that's a hard no.
Hard no from me.
You could say that's a hard pass, or that's a hard no, both mean the same thing you're declining, you definitely do not want to do it.
They cannot convince you.
Same thing with the wedding.
Your friend asks are you going to go to your ex-partner's wedding?
And you say hard pass.
Or you can say I'm a hard no, absolutely not.
Now, in the other cases that you can use hard no is when you are just refusing to do something or somebody's asking you for permission and you're just saying absolutely not, they cannot do whatever they're asking.
For example, let's say that you are at your work and it's Friday.
You want to go home for the weekend or maybe you have plans.
You're going somewhere for this weekend.
So you ask your boss if you can leave early.
If they tell you that you cannot leave early and they are going to get you in trouble, if you leave early, you can say that they were a hard no.
It was a hard no of a response.
It just means it's a little bit stronger than a regular no.
It's not like they just said you can't go, but they really threatened you and said that you absolutely cannot go or you'll get in trouble.
Or if you are a parent and maybe you have teenagers and your teenager asks you if they can go to some concert festival for a couple of days with their friends and you do not want them to go.
They cannot go.
They do not have your permission.
You can say it's a hard no.
Absolutely not.
They are not allowed to go do that.
Again that hard part in front of the no, just for emphasis, just to make it more obvious that you are saying for sure no, there is 0 chance.
Maybe they'll get in trouble even if they do whatever it is that you're saying they cannot do.
Another thing that you'll hear is hard out.
Now in California, especially in Los Angeles and in Hollywood, there are a lot of people who work in the entertainment industry.
And a lot of times you hear this just get shortened to be the industry.
So when people talk about being in the industry, what they mean is they're in entertainment movies, television music, something along those lines.
A hard out is a fairly common term you hear in the industry.
And what it means is that there is a very strict deadline when something has to end or when someone has to leave.
For example, let's say that you have a podcast and you're interviewing some famous celebrity about their upcoming movie.
They're busy.
They are doing a lot of press events.
They have different places they have to be to go do interviews.
Maybe they're going to go walk around. the red carpet for the premiere of their movie.
So they are busy.
So you might hear from their representatives that that famous actor has a hard out.
What that means is that at a particular time, that interview has to end.
There is a deadline for your interview because that person has to leave.
It is not negotiable.
So let's say you are having your interview with your famous actor as your guest on your podcast and the representative tells you that they have a hard out at one o'clock.
That means at one o'clock, the person has to go.
They're going to remove the actor from the interview at one o'clock.
You might be in the middle of a sentence.
You might be asking another question, but it doesn't matter.
They have to go.
So if someone has a hard out, that means that you really have to respect that time, and then they have to leave whenever they're supposed to leave.
So the examples I've given so far have been famous people, but this could also be if you're just talking with your friends.
Let's say you're going to a party and you have work the next morning.
You can tell them that hey, I'll go, but I'm a hard out at 10 o'clock, which means I can't stay out late with you.
I can't party with you super late because I have to go to work.
So I'm going to leave at 10.
And if you say I'm a hard out at 10 o'clock or whatever time, you're telling them by using that phrasing, heart out that it's a very set time, that you're not going to stay later than that.
So please don't ask.
Please don't try to get me to stay later because it is a set time.
I have to go.
Now, another slang term is hard up.
Hard up is very different from the ones that we've talked about so far.
And it means that you don't have any money.
What we're saying here by saying hard up, I'm saying that I do not have any money.
I am broke.
Because I don't get paid until next week, I'm going to be broke until next week.
So I am hard up until next week.
So you could use this if your friends invite you out for a weekend and say they want to go out to a restaurant, they want to go eating and drinking and spending money.
If you don't have that money, you can say, I'm sorry, I can't go.
I'm hard up right now.
You might also hear people say that they're hard up for cash.
That's just another variation of this.
It again means the same thing.
Hard up for cash.
Cash is a term for money.
So if someone says they're hard up for cash, it's just another way of saying they don't have any money left.
Then there's the phrase Hard Knock Life.
Hard Knock Life comes from a song from the musical Annie.
There are film versions if you are interested, if you want to check these out.
It is a musical, so they sing and dance.
And there is a song called Hard Knock Life.
So this song became popular from that movie, from that musical.
And then it became even more popular in 1998, when the rapper Jay-Z made a song that he sampled the lyrics from Hard Knock Life.
And what hard knock life means is that your life was very difficult, that there were a lot of challenges.
So in the song, they say it's a hard knock life for us.
And what that means is that their life is full of adversity.
It's full of difficulties.
It's full of challenges.
They don't have an easy life.
You'll hear this in two different ways.
One is being serious, being sincere.
If someone has a lot of troubles in their life, if they've had a lot of difficulties, if they've had a lot of things go wrong in their life, you can hear them say that they had a hard knock life.
You can also hear this as an ironic thing.
So let's say someone has a very easy life or they only have minor inconveniences.
They might say this as a joke.
For example, let's say that you get Starbucks every morning before work.
You go to Starbucks one morning and there's a super long line out the door.
You don't have time to get Starbucks before you have to go to work.
You could tell your coworkers when you get in, oh, I couldn't get my Starbucks this morning.
The line was too long.
It's a hard knock life.
That would be a joke because missing coffee really isn't.
Anything is not any serious challenge.
There's no real adversity in that.
So you can say it in a joking way.
You can also say it about someone.
So let's say someone is incredibly rich.
They are very powerful.
They have all of these connections and they're a really rich person and they're complaining about their life.
If maybe you're getting a little bit irritated about that, you're getting annoyed with them complaining about their life when they seem to have everything you can say oh yeah, it's a really hard knock life for them.
That would be kind of a sarcastic joke way to say it, that they really shouldn't be complaining.
They don't really have anything to complain about because their life is so easy.
Another phrase that's very similar to this is the school of hard knocks.
So the school of hard knocks is not a real school.
It's not a place that you go to, but it's something people say when they have learned a lot from their difficult life.
So those hard knocks, those challenges, those adversities in their life have taught them something.
Maybe it's given them skills.
Maybe it's helped them with their confidence or overcoming things.
And that was a type of education, not a formal education, not something at an actual school, but a way that they learned, a way that they developed in some way.
So if someone has a really difficult life but they feel like they've grown from it, that they've learned from it, they can say that they went to the school of hard knocks.
Here in the United States there is a documentary series that they do on sports teams where they have camera crews follow the sports teams and it's called Hard Knocks.
It does try to make...
Their seasons seem very dramatic, that they are going through a lot, because that's really what that term means.
And, of course, if you're interested in sports, if you like watching kind of sports documentaries, that's something that you could watch.
But really that's just what the title means is that they're going through adversity, they're going through obstacles, but they're learning from it and they're becoming better for it.
I hope you learned from this episode.
I hope you learned some of these slang terms.
I know slang is difficult because you can know these words individually, but when you combine them, when you change the context, you can have a variety of different meanings.
I hope you feel a little bit more confident about understanding what a native speaker says when they use these terms with you.
And I also hope you feel a little bit more confident about using them yourself in casual conversation.
If you want to practice using them, leave a comment in the comment section.
Pick out whichever one you think would be easiest to use and try making a sentence with these terms.
You can also let me know if you want more episodes like this in the future.
There are a lot of idioms.
I only picked a few for this episode.
If you would like more like this, please let me know.
If the podcast is helping you learn English, if you're enjoying it, please consider leaving us a rating on whatever app you are using to listen to this podcast on.
You can also tell a friend, tell a family member, tell someone who is learning English, so we can continue to grow our audience.
You can follow us on social media at Learn English Pod.
Your website is learnenglishpod.com.
And remember to like and subscribe so you don't miss our next episode when it comes out next week.
Until then, keep learning English.
