0 having a lot of difficulties doing something, especially because there is not enough time or money: --
Most people would be hard-pressed (= would find it difficult) to name more than half a dozen members of the government.
Because of shortages, the emergency services were hard-pressed to deal with the accident.
The latest education reforms have put extra pressure on teachers who are already hard-pressed.
1 experiencing a lot of difficulty: --
2 experiencing a lot of difficulty, especially because there is not enough time or money: --
It may seem like merely a convenient and less time-consuming expedient for the busy, hard-pressed composer.
In reality, social workers are hard-pressed and have limited budgets.
It could be argued that the 'daring experiment' was simply an instance of a hard-pressed council responding to a crisis.
By contrast, one would be hard-pressed to know where to look for a normative theory of language rights, whether liberal, communitarian, postcolonial, or otherwise.
Even with increasing life expectancy, one would be hard-pressed to argue that schooling years can increase forever without hitting a mortality constraint.
The hard-pressed police were on the point of using armed force against the hostile mob, which would certainly have resulted in a bloodbath.
Composers and performers may thus be hard-pressed to conform to the methodological requirements of scholarly discourse.
Thus, the peninsula is hard-pressed to maintain current log production levels to feed these industries.