- hard-bitten, hard-boiled, pugnacious - tough and callous by virtue of experience
Antonym: tender (indirect, via tough)
- pugnacious, rough - ready and able to resort to force or violence; "pugnacious spirits...lamented that there was so little prospect of an exhilarating disturbance"- Herman Melville; "they were rough and determined fighting men"
Antonyms: unaggressive, nonaggressive (indirect, via aggressive)