English

Noun

tough titties

1. (idiomatic) Too bad (for you); the outcome one desires is not likely to evolve, due to active intervention by the speaker.
   • 1976, Richard Price, Bloodbrothers, Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0395243033, page 1:

     His hand smelled from that oily **** inside Trojans. His pubic hair was still damp. He debated getting out of bed and taking a shower before Marie woke up and got a downwind whiff. Tough titties. What could she do? Yell? Scream? He'd crack her so goddamn hard she'd **** teeth for a week. Tommy sniffed his fingers. **** it. He rolled out of bed and headed for the shower. Goddamn stuff stinks anyway.

   • 1979, James Howard Kunstler, The Wampanaki Tales, Doubleday, ISBN 0385143850, page 140:

     "Tough titties." "I'm gonna tell Frank." "You'll get a new name if you do that, all right." "I will? What?" "Turtle That Gets Punched in the Mouth." "I'm telling!" "No you're not.

   • 1982, Barbara L. Greenberg, Fire Drills, University of Missouri Press, ISBN 0826203639, page 99:

     Tough titties, Martha. People sometimes rise to The Occasion and sometimes not, Martha. Often, people rise to The Occasion, then fall, then rise a little short of The Occasion, then fall again, and so forth: that's how the ball bounces.

   • 1983, Mark Baker, Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There, Berkley Books, OCLC 233672565, page 140:

     If we got overrun, it was just tough titties. In any case, we all packed the same things. We packed money, a camera and we packed Tampax. My flak jacket was so full of Tampax that nothing could have penetrated it.

   • 1983, Paul T. Rogers, Saul's Book, Pushcart Press, ISBN 0916366162, page 175:

     "Tough titties. You're stuck. I sign you in, I sign you out." "Two weeks? "Not one day less." "Suppose I'm sick, even with the medicine. Suppose it don't work on me?" "Suppose, suppose. Suppose pigs had wings, why then they would fly.

   • 1984, Jean Alexander Kemeny, Strands of War, Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0395361761, page 72:

     Talk about tough titties! They're hard, like Rolf. Waldi, the singer, calls one Briinhilde although she's really Hanni.

Quotations

For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:tough titties.

Synonyms

• (too bad for you): tough luck, tough cookies, tough ****, tough titty, tough tuchus, tough toodles, **** titties, hard cheese

Etymology 2

Noun

tough titties

1. plural of tough titty