- harden
- harden 1 Harden, solidify, indurate, petrify, cake are comparable when they mean to make or to become physically hard or solid.Harden usually expresses an opposition to soften and therefore may be as often used of the process as of the effect. The term suggests a change in degree with an approach toward a state of firm consistency or texture, though it need not imply impenetrability or resistance to efforts to break, cut, pierce, or bend{
Iava as it cools hardens into rock
}{harden candy by chilling it
}Solidify, although differing little from harden, usually expresses an opposition to liquefy and places more stress upon the effect produced than upon the process involved; the term, therefore, suggests a change in quality rather than in degree and is more often applied to a mass subject to compacting or consolidation{Iava becomes rock when it is solidified
}{water solidifies into ice
}Indurate, which means to make very hard or very compact, implies usually the making of something that is firm in texture still harder{heat indurates clay
}{surgeons . . . spend raptures upon perfect specimens of indurated veins, distorted joints— E. B. Browning
}Petrify implies a making or becoming stone or stonelike in hardness; the word is used of organic bodies that by a process (called petrifaction) of infiltration by water containing mineral deposits (as silica, calcium carbonate) and the replacement, particle by particle, of the organic matter by the introduced mineral become replaced by stony mineral while the original form is more or less perfectly retained.Cake implies the formation into a firm, hard, or solid mass (as by baking, fusing, or congealing){[a barrel of gunpowder] had taken water, and the powder was caked as hard as a stone— Defoe
}{the salt had caked in the shakers and did not flow
}Analogous words: *compact, consolidate, concentrate: compress, condense, *contractAntonyms: softenContrasted words: *Iiquefy, melt2 Harden, season, acclimatize, acclimate denote to make (as a person) proof against hardship, strain, or exposure.All imply a becoming accustomed or adapted by time or experience.Harden implies habituation that toughens one and makes one insensible of one's own pain or discomfort or callous and insensitive to others' misery{hardened to the rigors of arctic exp!oration
}{I could . . . hear faint echoes of their grief. It was an experience to which I never became hardened— Heiser
}{its influence did not harden him; he has always risen above cynicism— Triebel
}Season implies a gradual bringing into mature, sound, efficient condition; it does not, when referred to persons, necessarily imply that what is to be undergone is uncongenial{a seasoned marathon runner
}{a seasoned actor
}{with much less compass of muscle than his foe, that which he had was more seasoned—iron and compact— Lytton
}Acclimatize and acclimate imply adaptation to a new and adverse climate or, by extension, to new and strange surroundings in general. Some writers have distinguished acclimatize from acclimate by restricting the first to adaptation by human agency, but this distinction is not commonly observed{a race . . . well seated in a region, fixed to the soil by agriculture, acclimatized by natural selection— Ripley
}{I have not been long enough at this table to get well acclimated— Holmes
}Antonyms: soften
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
