Modifies a noun

• approach: For all the emphasis on people, Leng and his partners would not be where they are today without a hard-nosed approach to finances.

• businessman: Since then we'd had lots of meetings and he was a hard-nosed businessman.

• business: And all approaches have successfully served the same hard-nosed business aims at their core: build the brand; sell the product.

• tycoon: She is no longer a princess but a hard-nosed corporate business tycoon who owns the planet financially and from the technological stand-point.

• world: Yet in the hard-nosed world of politics morality counts for little.

• reporter: I doubt whether these will be embraced by the hard-nosed tabloid reporters who stir up instant outrage over Turner Prize exhibitions.

Modifying Another Word

• very: From then on I knew that nothing was impossible in the very hard-nosed world of fashion.