| / English Dictionary |
HARDNESS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Excessive sternness
Example:
the rigors of boot camp
Synonyms:
hardness; harshness; inclemency; rigor; rigorousness; rigour; rigourousness; severeness; severity; stiffness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("hardness" is a kind of...):
sternness; strictness (uncompromising resolution)
Derivation:
hard (unfortunate or hard to bear)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The quality of being difficult to do
Example:
the ruggedness of his exams caused half the class to fail
Synonyms:
hardness; ruggedness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("hardness" is a kind of...):
difficultness; difficulty (the quality of being difficult)
Derivation:
hard (not easy; requiring great physical or mental effort to accomplish or comprehend or endure)
hard (characterized by effort to the point of exhaustion; especially physical effort)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Devoid of passion or feeling; hardheartedness
Synonyms:
callosity; callousness; hardness; insensibility; unfeelingness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("hardness" is a kind of...):
insensitiveness; insensitivity (the inability to respond to affective changes in your interpersonal environment)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "hardness"):
dullness (lack of sensibility)
Derivation:
hard (dispassionate)
Sense 4
Meaning:
A quality of water that contains dissolved mineral salts that prevent soap from lathering
Example:
the costs of reducing hardness depend on the relative amounts of calcium and magnesium compounds that are present
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("hardness" is a kind of...):
quality (an essential and distinguishing attribute of something or someone)
Sense 5
Meaning:
The property of being rigid and resistant to pressure; not easily scratched; measured on Mohs scale
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("hardness" is a kind of...):
body; consistence; consistency; substance (the property of holding together and retaining its shape)
Attribute:
hard (resisting weight or pressure)
soft (yielding readily to pressure or weight)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "hardness"):
firmness (the property of being unyielding to the touch)
incompressibility (the property of being incompressible)
Antonym:
softness (the property of giving little resistance to pressure and being easily cut or molded)
Derivation:
hard (resisting weight or pressure)
Context examples:
A properly equipped MRI machine captures a cross sectional image of the sound waves, produced by ultrasound techniques, which are then processed by computer to produce an image showing the hardness or elasticity of tissues within the cross section.
(Magnetic Resonance Elastography, NCI Thesaurus)
In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother—and only one; the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent's Cairngorm eye: the blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and chin—perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable hardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous and buxom.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
And Jo dropped down beside the bed in a passion of penitent tears, telling all that had happened, bitterly condemning her hardness of heart, and sobbing out her gratitude for being spared the heavy punishment which might have come upon her.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
The consequences of the increased pressure may be manifested in a variety of symptoms, depending upon type and severity, such as excavation of the optic disk, hardness of the eyeball, corneal anesthesia, reduced visual acuity, seeing of colored halos around lights, disturbed dark adaptation, visual field defects, and headaches.
(Glaucoma, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)
However, the term hardness may also refer to resistance to bending, scratching, abrasion or cutting.
(Device Hardness Testing Evaluation Method, Food and Drug Administration)
They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and moped in my corner; scared by their love-making and hilarity, though it was far from boisterous, and almost wondering that no judgement came upon them for their hardness of heart.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The stiff-rim and the square-cut vanished, being replaced by milder garments; the toughness went out of the face, the hardness out of the eyes; and, the face, chastened and refined, was irradiated from an inner life of communion with beauty and knowledge.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Six hundred beds of the common measure were brought in carriages, and worked up in my house; a hundred and fifty of their beds, sewn together, made up the breadth and length; and these were four double: which, however, kept me but very indifferently from the hardness of the floor, that was of smooth stone.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Now that arrangement was not conducive to calm speech or clear thought on Jo's part, for how could she say hard things to her boy while he watched her with eyes full of love and longing, and lashes still wet with the bitter drop or two her hardness of heart had wrung from him?
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
I understood that, sitting there where I did, on the bank of heath, and with that handsome form before me, I sat at the feet of a man, caring as I. The veil fell from his hardness and despotism.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
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