"hard core" (OED 1936)

[Neal Whitman]

In this by-subscription column for Visual Thesaurus, I trace the history
of "hardcore" as the source of the libfix "core" and the analogy-formed
"softcore" and "midcore," and its development into an adjective with
three sets of comparative/superlative forms: "more/most hardcore",
"hardcorer/est", "harder/est core". OED's earliest citation has it as a
nominal phrase in 1936: "the hard core of the unemployed"; I have an
earlier example from 1930:
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dictionary/core-values-the-evolution-of-hardcore-usage/

Neal

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org