harden Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. verb become hard or harder
    indurate.
    • The wax hardened
  2. verb make hard or harder
    indurate.
    • The cold hardened the butter
  3. verb harden by reheating and cooling in oil
    temper.
    • temper steel
  4. verb make fit
    season.
    • This trip will season even the hardiest traveller
  5. verb cause to accept or become hardened to; habituate
    indurate; inure.
    • He was inured to the cold

WordNet

Hard"en transitive verb
Etymology
OE. hardnen, hardenen.
Wordforms
imperfect & past participle Hardened ; present participle & verbal noun Hardening
Definitions
  1. To make hard or harder; to make firm or compact; to indurate; as, to harden clay or iron.
  2. 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." Ps. xcv. 8.
    I would harden myself in sorrow. Job vi. 10.
Hard"en intransitive verb
Definitions
  1. 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. The Century.
  2. To become confirmed or strengthened, in either a good or a bad sense.
    They, hardened more by what might most reclaim. Milton.

Webster 1913