A dialectal or archaic term, possibly referring to a type of shrew (small mammal) or a hardened, shrewd person.
Combining 'hardish' (somewhat hard) or 'hardy' with 'shrew' (the animal, Old English 'screawa'). The exact etymology is uncertain, as this appears to be a rare dialectal or specialized term.
This mysterious word might be a window into lost regional animal names—English once had hundreds of local names for creatures that we now call by standard terms, and most vanished when dictionaries standardized 'correct' names.
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