The sheer hard facedness of it all.

[Aerin]

Hi,
I work as a translator and recently I just stumbled on this sentence:
"The sheer hard facedness of it all, it just beggars belief, to be quite honest."

Could anyone translate this into "simple" English? I have no idea what that sentence means.

thanks in advance

 

[Tarheel]

Perhaps It's a new expression. What's the source?

 

[Aerin]

Perhaps It's a new expression. What's the source?

The message is incomplete, it was edited by an admin. The whole sentence was "The sheer hard facedness of it all, it just beggars belief, to be quite honest."

BBC series called "Filthy Rotten Scoundrels"

Just talked to a cousin who lives in UK, she said it should mean that for the person speaking its tough and basically hard for him to accept.

but more opinions are always welcomed.

 

[tedmc]

What do you mean by 'sheer hard-facedness'?

 

[JMurray]

not a teacher


In my experience an action or attitude is described as "hard-faced" (I would include the hyphen) if it shows a lack of sympathy, understanding or warmth, or is very uncompromising. I give those as examples only, as I'm sure there are regional differences. According to Dictionary.com it can mean simply "cheeky" in Northern UK English.

If something "beggars belief", to quote the Oxford online, it is "too extraordinary to be believed".

If you give us more context we can get a better sense of the specific meaning here.

 

[Tdol]

Without more context, it sounds like the person was astonished by the coldness, the complete lack of emotion or empathy.

 

[Tdol]

The message is incomplete, it was edited by an admin. The whole sentence was "The sheer hard facedness of it all, it just beggars belief, to be quite honest."

Isn't that exactly the same as the original message? I think people are looking for the surrounding sentences to widen the context.

 

[Rover_KE]

I have lived in the north west of England for 77 years and despite what dictionaries say, 'hard-faced' never means 'cheeky'.

It has the meaning described by JMurray and Tdol. Cf 'stony-faced', intransigent, uncompromising.

 

[Aerin]

Isn't that exactly the same as the original message? I think people are looking for the surrounding sentences to widen the context.

Yes, my apologies, I was being blind.

 

[Aerin]

Context of this was a statement of Environment officer, who was basically reacting to some fly tipper, who set the fly tip on fire and wanted to leave. (Its from a BBC series called "Filthy Rotten Scoundrels".

So if I understand it correctly, it basically means that he was shocked by his behavior (how cold blooded he was) to the extent it was hard for him to believe it.

Thanks everyone participating

 

[Tdol]

An environment officer could well be shocked by this callousness, so you understand it correctly.

 

[Rover_KE]

Aerin, in future, please give us the context in post #1 rather than #10.