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HARDENED
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Converted to solid form (as concrete)
Synonyms:
hardened; set
Classified under:
Similar:
hard (resisting weight or pressure)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Used of persons; emotionally hardened
Example:
faced a case-hardened judge
Synonyms:
case-hardened; hard-boiled; hardened
Classified under:
Similar:
hard (dispassionate)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Protected against attack (especially by nuclear weapons)
Example:
hardened missile silos
Classified under:
Adjectives
Antonym:
soft (not protected against attack (especially by nuclear weapons))
Sense 4
Meaning:
Made hard or flexible or resilient especially by heat treatment
Example:
tempered glass
Synonyms:
hardened; tempered; toughened; treated
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
curable (capable of being hardened by some additive or other agent)
sunbaked (baked or hardened by exposure to sunlight; not burned)
Sense 5
Meaning:
Made tough by habitual exposure
Example:
our successors...may be graver, more inured and equable men
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
tough; toughened (physically toughened)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Past simple / past participle of the verb harden
Context examples:
A vague thrill ran through me as I listened to my companion’s words and saw the stern gravity which had hardened his features.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
After the sediment hardened, wind carved the layered rock into the towering Mount Sharp, which Curiosity is climbing today.
(NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds an Ancient Oasis on Mars, NASA)
CAD happens when the arteries that supply blood to heart muscle become hardened and narrowed.
(Coronary Artery Disease, NIH: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute)
Various high-molecular-weight thermoplastic or thermosetting polymers that are capable of being molded, extruded, drawn, or otherwise shaped and then hardened into a form.
(Plastic, NCI Thesaurus)
In coronary artery disease (CAD), the arteries that supply blood and oxygen to your heart muscle grow hardened and narrowed.
(Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery, NIH: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute)
Patients may be shorter than average, and have health problems such as loss and graying of hair, hardening of the arteries, thinning of the bones, diabetes, and thin, hardened skin.
(Adult progeria, NCI Dictionary)
Some of the sequence is understood: Mud that formed lake-bed mudstones Curiosity examined near its 2012 landing site and after reaching Mount Sharp must have dried and hardened before the fractures formed.
(Curiosity Eyes Prominent Mineral Veins on Mars, NASA)
Based on a 2016 study using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists speculated that lava would flow freely in lakes on the starlit side and become hardened on the face of perpetual darkness.
(Lava or Not, Exoplanet 55 Cancri e Likely to have Atmosphere, NASA)
Not, however, that many instances of beings equally hardened in guilt might not be produced.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Anne herself was become hardened to such affronts; but she felt the imprudence of the arrangement quite as keenly as Lady Russell.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
