Hardy is about getting through hard conditions. Resilient is about bouncing back afterwards.
Both words praise toughness, and they often share a synonym list, so children swap them freely. The difference is timing.
Hardy is toughness during the difficulty. Hardy sheep stay out on the hills all winter in wind and sleet, and hardy plants survive a frost that kills the rest of the garden. They cope with harsh conditions as they happen.
Resilient is what happens after the knock. A resilient netball team loses the first three matches of the season, picks itself up and wins the league. A resilient child has a bad day at school and is back to themselves by teatime. The word is about recovery, not about never being knocked down.
Strong and able to cope with difficult conditions.
Similar: tough, strong, sturdy
Able to bounce back quickly after something bad happens.
Similar: tough, strong, hardy
Verbal reasoning questions sometimes offer both words as close options. Asking yourself whether the sentence is about enduring something or recovering from it is usually what separates the right answer from the nearly right one.
Definitions and example sentences on this page are the ones a child sees inside Wordrealm, taken from our list of over 1,100 words. It is free to browse, with nothing to sign up for.
Plain-English guides to each test, from the councils’ own pages: Kent Test · Medway Test · Bucks Secondary Transfer Test