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To make hard or harder; to make firm or compact; to indurate; as, to harden clay or iron.

Made hard, or compact; made unfeeling or callous; made obstinate or obdurate; confirmed in error or vice.

One who, or that which, hardens; specif., one who tempers tools.

That which hardens, as a material used for converting the surface of iron into steel.

To subject to a process which converts the surface of iron into steel.

Having the surface hardened, as iron tools.

The act or process of converting the surface of iron into steel. Ure.

To harden; to embolden. [Obs.] Howell.

To harden, as a metal, by hammering it in the cold state.

To harden too much; to make too hard. Boyle.

Designating, or pert. to, any of various steels that harden when heated to above a red heat and cooled in air, usually in a blast of cold air with moderate rapidity, without quenching. Such steels are alloys of iron and carbon with manganese, tungsten and manganese, chromium, molybdenum and manganese, etc. They are chi…

Habituation. Accustomedness to sin hardens the heart. Bp. Pearce.

The hardening of a gland.

Abnormal thickening and hardening of the walls of the arteries, esp. of the intima, occurring mostly in old age. -- Ar*te`ri*o*scle*rot"ic (#), a.

To dry or harden (anything) by subjecting to heat, as, to bake bricks; the sun bakes the ground.

The act or process of cooking in an oven, or of drying and hardening by heat or cold.

To harden or dry in smoke. Johnson.

as the surface of meat, by plunging into boiling water and afterwards into cold, so as to harden the surface and retain the juices.

unwilling to understand or judge; as, authors are blind to their own defects. But hard be hardened, blind be blinded more, That they may stumble on, and deeper fall. Milton.

Hard to impress or penetrate. [R.] I find my heart hardened and blunt to new impressions. Pope.