HARDENING • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Hardening

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/hˈɑrdənɪŋ/ /hˈɑrdnɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Harden v. t. (past & past part. hardened; pres. part. hardening)

To make hard or harder; to make firm or compact; to indurate; as, to harden clay or iron.

To accustom by labor or suffering to endure with constancy; to strengthen; to stiffen; to inure; also, to confirm in wickedness or shame; to make unimpressionable. "Harden not your heart." "I would harden myself in sorrow."

Harden v. i.

To become hard or harder; to acquire solidity, or more compactness; as, mortar hardens by drying. "The deliberate judgment of those who knew him (A. Lincoln) has hardened into tradition."

To become confirmed or strengthened, in either a good or a bad sense. "They, hardened more by what might most reclaim."

noun

Hardening n.

Making hard or harder.

That which hardens, as a material used for converting the surface of iron into steel.

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Etymology of 'Hardening'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Hardening" Quotes from Famous Books

... insane persons; as insanity increases, prostitution decreases. But if we mean a minor degree of moral imbecility—that is to say, a bluntness of perception for the ordinary moral considerations of civilization which, while it is largely due to the hardening influence of an unfavorable early environment, may also rest on a congenital predisposition—there can be no doubt that moral imbecility of slight degree is very frequently found among prostitutes. It ...

— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... bewildering was the change in Cherry. There was a certain hardening that impressed Alix at once. There was a weary sort of patience, a disillusioned concession to the drabness of married life. Alix, after meeting some of the other wives at the mine—there were but five or six—saw that Cherry had been affected by them. ...

— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... ship by swimming to her. But the Portugees are not very hard with their Negroes, save up at the Gold-mines, where Mercy is quite unknown. Aqua d'oro may be a very good Eye-water; but, sure, there's nothing like it for hardening of the Heart. ...

— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... central portion of the lava stream long retains its high temperature; but the surface, cooling, is first converted into a tough sheet, which, though it may bend, can hardly be said to flow. Further hardening converts these outlying portions of the current into hard, glassy stone, which is broken into fragments in a way resembling the ice on the surface of a river. It thus comes about that the advancing front ...

— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... cyanide for steel-hardening purposes, T.R. Almond, of Brooklyn, N.Y., suggests that this salt assists the hardening process because of its powerful deoxidizing properties, and also because it forms a liquid film on the surface of the steel, which causes a more ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

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