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The act of making something harder (firmer or tighter or more compact)
Answer for the clue "The act of making something harder (firmer or tighter or more compact) ", 9 letters:
hardening
Alternative clues for the word hardening
Word definitions for hardening in dictionaries
WordNet
Word definitions in WordNet
n. abnormal hardening or thickening of tissue the process of becoming hard or solid by cooling or drying or crystallization; "the hardening of concrete"; "he tested the set of the glue" [syn: solidifying , solidification , set , curing ] the act of making ...
Wikipedia
Word definitions in Wikipedia
In computing , hardening is usually the process of securing a system by reducing its surface of vulnerability , which is larger when a system performs more functions; in principle a single-function system is more secure than a multipurpose one. Reducing ...
Wiktionary
Word definitions in Wiktionary
n. 1 The process by which something hardens. 2 That which hardens, such as a material used for converting the surface of iron into steel. vb. (present participle of harden English)
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Hardening \Hard"en*ing\, n. Making hard or harder. That which hardens, as a material used for converting the surface of iron into steel.
Usage examples of hardening.
But the hardening brown earth between her toes, that was discomfiting.
She frowned, her dark, fine brows drawing together and the lines in that strong, crepy face hardening.
Snow now caked her mammoth claws, packed between the phalanges of what had once been her fingers, hardening with each painful step.
The Deity of the Old Testament is everywhere represented as the direct author of Evil, commissioning evil and lying spirits to men, hardening the heart of Pharaoh, and visiting the iniquity of the individual sinner on the whole people.
The rain was turning to a semisoft slush at her feet, and the icy drops were hardening as they fellthey had some sting as they struck her bare neck, when she bent over to speak to him through the rolled-down window.
Sometimes, during the day, he went for a short hike, nursing his blister and hardening his feet and at least once a day he dropped in to see Tapper and his father and son, drinking cocoa in the littered bakery and listening to Flash Sugg inveigh against the modern trends of The Trade.
The snow was not yet deep, and it aided them in dragging the travoises over the hardening ground.
But now, her tone gradually hardening, the Queen observed that she was about to enter what the Amazons called Last Quarter: her menses came only infrequently, soon would cease.
Lately he was increasingly frightened by his emotional detachment, an unwanted but apparently irreversible hardening of the heart that would soon leave him with auricles of marble and ventricles of common stone.
Still nothing as Mrs Murphy came in, her hem sagging, her coat smelling of bonfires, her legs still ulcerating but according to the notes this was now due in the main to hardening of the arteries.
They were setting up mantelets and bunkers, hardening the stuff that here passed for soil into respectable defensive armor.
Callista the slow, inexorable deadening of normal physical responses, the numbing of bodily reflexes, the hardening of tensions in mind and body into a rigid armoring.
Unless you know the catalytic agent and the environment, method and period of hardening, you can study the finished metal until your mind congeals without learning its secrets.
There were also several books which instructed the reader that peace of mind of the sort possessed by great saints could be achieved by five minutes of daily contemplation, and two or three complementary books which explained that worry, heart disease, hardening of the arteries, taedium cordis and despair could all be avoided by relaxing the muscles.
Caralie swiped her tears with the back of her hand and stood, the ache of loss hardening into a ball of anger.