hard to please
5
6.1
- idiom
:
difícil de complacer
- My father is very hard to please; he always finds faults with every gift I give him.
- try hard to please
- really hard to please
- too hard to please
Examples
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You never used to be so hard to please.
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You're kind of hard to please.
Blog text (9) -
Even for someone as hard to please as yourself.
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- You are hard to please.
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Are you hard to please?
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His mom was hard to please, too.
Academic text (2011) -
I try so hard to please him, but nothing is ever good enough.
Blog text (1) -
You know me, I'm hard to please.
Blog text (26) -
I'm not that hard to please.
Blog text (29) -
Some individuals become irritable when they are sick and may be hard to please.
Academic text (2015)
Synonyms
386
2.1
Hard to control or deal with, often not willing to help
106
4.4
Careful about small details and hard to please
67
4.7
Being hard to please about food or small details
15
3.9
Hard to please when choosing things like clothes or food
13
6.7
Needing a lot of care and attention
12
7.1
Hard to please and careful about small details
8
8.0
Very careful about small details and being clean, often hard to please
1
9.9
A person or feeling that always wants more and is never pleased
A person who is very picky about what they accept
Too worried about small details and hard to please
Needing a lot of time, effort, or attention
Always wanting more and never feeling content
How Picky
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'difficult to satisfy' is directly and compositionally derived from 'hard' (difficult) combined with the infinitival 'to please' (to cause someone to feel pleased); the pattern 'hard to + verb' transparently expresses difficulty. This is a regular grammatical construction found across languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Hard to please comes from the simple image of someone whose feelings are hard, like a stone, so nothing you do to please them makes them soft or happy. So, the phrase means 'difficult to satisfy'.