Adjacent Words

Hardness definitions

	Tweet

Webster's 1828 Dictionary

H`ARDNESS, n. [See Hard.] Firmness; close union of the component parts; compactness; solidity; the quality of bodies which resists impression; opposed to softness and fluidity.
1. Difficulty to be understood.
2. Difficulty to be executed or accomplished; as the hardness of an enterprise.
3. Scarcity; penury; difficulty of obtaining money; as the hardness of the times.
4. Obduracy; impenitence; confirmed state of wickedness; as hardness of heart.
5. Coarseness of features; harshness of look; as hardness of favor.
6. Severity of cold; rigor; as the hardness of winter.
7. Cruelty of temper; savageness; harshness.
The blame
May hang upon your hardness.
8. Stiffness; harshness; roughness; as the hardnesses of sculpture.
9. Closeness; niggardliness; stinginess.
10. Hardship; severe labor, trials or sufferings.
Endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. 2 Timothy 2.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: the property of being rigid and resistant to pressure; not easily scratched; measured on Mohs scale [ant: softness]
2: a quality of water that contains dissolved mineral salts that prevent soap from lathering; "the costs of reducing hardness depend on the relative amounts of calcium and magnesium compounds that are present"
3: devoid of passion or feeling; hardheartedness [syn: unfeelingness, callousness, callosity, hardness, insensibility]
4: the quality of being difficult to do; "he assigned a series of problems of increasing hardness"; "the ruggedness of his exams caused half the class to fail" [syn: hardness, ruggedness]
5: excessive sternness; "severity of character"; "the harshness of his punishment was inhuman"; "the rigors of boot camp" [syn: severity, severeness, harshness, rigor, rigour, rigorousness, rigourousness, inclemency, hardness, stiffness]

Merriam Webster's

noun Date: before 12th century 1. the quality or state of being hard 2. a. the cohesion of the particles on the surface of a mineral as determined by its capacity to scratch another or be itself scratched — compare Mohs' scale b. resistance of metal to indentation under a static load or to scratching

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Hardness Hard"ness, n. [AS. heardness.] 1. The quality or state of being hard, literally or figuratively. The habit of authority also had given his manners some peremptory hardness. --Sir W. Scott. 2. (Min.) The cohesion of the particles on the surface of a body, determined by its capacity to scratch another, or be itself scratched;-measured among minerals on a scale of which diamond and talc form the extremes. 3. (Chem.) The peculiar quality exhibited by water which has mineral salts dissolved in it. Such water forms an insoluble compound with soap, and is hence unfit for washing purposes. Note: This quality is caused by the presence of calcium carbonate, causing temporary hardness which can be removed by boiling, or by calcium sulphate, causing permanent hardness which can not be so removed, but may be improved by the addition of sodium carbonate.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

see hard

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Firmness, solidity, compactness, impenetrability. 2. Difficulty, perplexity, perplexing character or nature. 3. Scarcity, penury, poverty, severity, rigor, narrowness. 4. Hardship, suffering, tribulation, trial.

Moby Thesaurus

Philistinism, abstruseness, arduousness, armor, asperity, astringency, austerity, bothersomeness, burdensomeness, callosity, callousness, callus, closeness, cohesiveness, coldbloodedness, coldheartedness, coldness, compactness, complexity, complication, congestedness, congestion, consistence, consistency, crabbedness, crampedness, crowdedness, cruelty, deepness, denseness, density, difficultness, difficulty, durability, esoterica, firmness, flintiness, formidable defenses, fundamentalism, gluiness, grimness, hairiness, hard heart, hard shell, hardenedness, hardheartedness, hardiness, hardness of heart, hardship, harshness, heart of stone, heartlessness, impenetrability, impenitence, impenitentness, impermeability, imperviousness, impliability, imporosity, inclemency, incompressibility, induration, inexorability, inexorableness, inflexibility, infrangibility, insensitiveness, insensitivity, insolence, intricacy, inuredness, irrepentance, jammedness, knottiness, laboriousness, lastingness, leatherlikeness, mercilessness, nonrepentance, obduracy, obdurateness, obstinacy, onerousness, oppressiveness, orthodoxy, pitilessness, precisianism, profoundness, profundity, purism, puritanism, reconditeness, relative density, relentlessness, remorselessness, resistance, rhinoceros hide, rigidity, rigidness, rigor, rigorousness, ropiness, roughness, ruggedness, ruthlessness, seared conscience, severity, short shrift, solidity, solidness, soundness, specific gravity, spissitude, stability, stamina, staunchness, sternness, stiffness, stoniness, stoutness, strength, strenuousness, stringency, stringiness, stubbornness, sturdiness, temper, tenacity, tender mercies, thick skin, thickness, toilsomeness, toughness, troublesomeness, unabjectness, unbendingness, unbreakability, unbreakableness, uncompassionateness, uncompromisingness, uncontriteness, unfeeling, unfeelingness, unforgivingness, ungentleness, unmercifulness, unnaturalness, unrelentingness, unremorsefulness, unresponsiveness, unsympatheticness, unyieldingness, vicissitude, vigor, viscidity, viscosity, viscousness, vitality