Meaning
A person who is resilient, unflappable and hard to intimidate - someone who absorbs setbacks or pressure without giving in; usually admiring, as in 'one tough cookie'. Informal and American in origin, though now widely understood. Informal and usually admiring or amused; can sound patronising if used about a colleague in a formal setting. Regional use: American English.
Origin
Built on early twentieth-century American slang 'cookie' for a person of a specified kind, a sense the Oxford English Dictionary records from 1913 and groups with 'smart cookie'. Green's Dictionary of Slang cites 'tough cookie', glossed as a survivor, someone emotionally or physically strong, from 1915, with citations running to 2014; the Historical Dictionary of American Slang adds examples from 1942. The image plays on 'tough' as a texture: a cookie too hard to crumble, hence a person too sturdy to break. Claims of a 1970s coinage circulate online, but the record shows the phrase was established half a century earlier.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a real tough cookie
- one tough cookie
- quite a tough cookie
- tough cookies
Usage Examples
- After her third knee reconstruction, Marta was back on the slopes within a year; she is one tough cookie.
- The new sergeant struck the recruits as a tough cookie who had seen everything twice over.
- You have to be a tough cookie to run a night-market stall through a midwinter season.