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Lin asks: I know the word “die”, and I know the word “hard” but I don’t understand it when they are bundled together – I don’t know why “die-hard” (as in “a die-hard Teresa Teng fan”) means loyalty My comments: A great question. In “a die-hard Teresa Teng fan”, “die-hard” serves as an adjective. It can work as a verb as well. We can work the phrase around and say the Teresa Teng fans die hard. The great songstress from Taiwan died in 1995 but her followers are still everywhere. Most of these fans are 40 years or older – but they’re not going away. That’s why they called “die hard”. Literally, to die hard is to, well, and die in the hard way, not ceasing to be easily. This term is originally derived from the old practice of putting a criminal to death by hanging. This is a die-hard practice itself, you may say, as in 2010 “at least 238 hangings were recorded in six countries, down from 337 in seven countries during 2009” (CapitalPunishmentUK.org). In death by hanging, a knot of rope hanging from overhead beams is tied to a prisoner’s neck. He then is ordered to climb onto, say, a chair, which supports his weight. Then the chair is removed, leaving the prisoner hanging, suspended in the air, to die. Some die instantly – in a matter of seconds or a few minutes. Others don’t. In a book I’ve just finished reading, Capote Truman’s In Cold Blood, a true account of a murder of a farmer family back in 1959 America, one of the murderers, Richard Hickock “hung for all to see a full twenty minutes before the prison doctor at last said, ‘I pronounce this man dead’.” | 
