Definition of "dearly-won" []

• Entailing great loss or sacrifice (adjective)

WordNet. Princeton University. 2010.

• "Satanic powers behind the scenes have planned scarcities, depressions, wars, punitive taxes, and strife, with the diabolical purpose of crushing our spirit, destroying our moral fibre, so that we will easily yield to the enticements of handouts from a State in return for surrender of dearly-won freedoms."
• "It is a hard-fought and dearly-won battle, by which sinful man may reach Heaven."
• "In such a society, art could hardly have had a mission other than the glorification of a power without limit and without control -- a power to which alone the Assyrians had to look for a continuance of their dearly-won supremacy."