From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishlearn (something) the hard waylearn (something) the hard wayLEARNto understand a situation or develop a skill by learning from your mistakes and bad experiences → learn
Examples from the Corpus
learn (something) the hard way• But, as Server shows us, he learned apathy the hard way.• I learned this the hard way.• She had learned it the hard way and she never let her guard slip at all.• The Lisa designers also learned this the hard way, and their computer shipped with 1024K, or a megabyte of memory.• I learned that the hard way, by losing a couple of first drafts of articles I was writing.• I learned the hard way that drugs weren't an answer to my problems.• Early on he learned - the hard way - that it was the passport to success.• He learned this the hard way, when he tried to move his head.• Mainline medicine learned this the hard way when it first started to use anesthetics. 