hardened
Americanadjective
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made or become hard or harder.
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pitiless; unfeeling.
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firmly established or unlikely to change; inveterate.
a hardened criminal.
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inured; toughened.
a hardened trooper.
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rigid; unyielding.
a hardened attitude.
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(of a missile base) equipped to launch missiles from underground silos.
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(of a missile) capable of being launched from an underground silo.
adjective
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rigidly set, as in a mode of behaviour
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toughened, as by custom; seasoned
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(of a nuclear missile site) constructed to withstand a nuclear attack
Other Word Forms
- semihardened adjective
- unhardened adjective
- well-hardened adjective
Etymology
Origin of hardened
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
I tried to speak, but my tongue felt heavy inside my mouth, like it had swelled and hardened.
From Literature
At times, his position appears to have hardened against Russia.
From BBC
He said the rank and file had been hardened “in the fight against corruption” and praised them as “entirely trustworthy.”
The choice of many schools and companies to convert therapeutic language into policy has hardened these cultural preferences into rules with administrative force.
Aggressive and revolutionary from the start, Iran’s regime has hardened into what the historian Ali M. Ansari calls an “Islamic security state.”
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
