Hard and Fast Rules
"Rules that are strict, fixed, and not open to exceptions."
A nautical image, describing a ship that has run aground and is stuck fast on the bottom, unable to move in any direction, "hard" meaning firmly, and "fast" meaning securely fixed, the same "fast" as in "stuck fast" or "holding fast." The phrase itself is recorded from as early as 1380, though it wasn't until the mid-1800s that it took on its familiar figurative sense: a rule as immovable and unbending as a beached ship, incapable of being adjusted for individual circumstances.
Sources: Oxford English Dictionary, earliest citation c.1380; figurative use documented from the mid-19th century.
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