Definition of "hard-grained" [hard-grained]

• Having a close, firm grain.
• Unattractive; not amiable or inviting.

The Century Dictionary (Public Domain)

• "Like all digital technologies, the iPhone has yet to achieve the hard-grained, Spartan elegancies of the steely Leatherman."
• "In the hard-grained face of Wegg, and in his stiff knotty figure (he looked like a German wooden toy), there was expressed a politic conciliation, which had no spontaneity in it."
• "On the ground were placed, in two rows, sixteen chairs, made of hard-grained cedar."