- The –ing ending implies that the word is an adjective and it is a form of compound word. The Hard implies that the recipient of the message is “playing hard to get” to the point where the person sending the message reaches his/her “boiling” point or utterly aggravated – hence the term, hard-boiling. It doesn’t necessarily have to be intentional; one may not know that s/he is hard-boiling until it is occurring.
Hard-boiling
verb compound
: describes the incident when the recipient of a text message does not reply back immediately
Etymology : “Hard” meaning difficult, “Boiling” meaning reaching a climax suffixed with “-ing”.
Source : : I heard the term being used from a friend over this past summer. I received a text from another friend asking if I can help her with homework. I did not even pull out my phone to read the message (I checked later on). The friend I was with said that I was hard-boiling her. 09/4/11
Last modified: 6 December 2011