Crossword clues for hardness
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Hardness \Hard"ness\, n. [AS. heardness.]
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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. (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.
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(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.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Old English heardnysse; see hard + -ness. Meaning "difficulty of action or accomplishment" is late 14c.
Wiktionary
n. 1 The quality of being hard. 2 An instance of this quality; hardship.
WordNet
n. the property of being rigid and resistant to pressure; not easily scratched; measured on Mohs scale [ant: softness]
devoid of passion or feeling [syn: unfeelingness, callousness, insensibility]
the quality of being difficult to do; "he assigned a series of problems of increasing hardness"
excessive sternness; "severity of character"; "the harshness of his punishment was inhuman"; "the rigors of boot camp" [syn: severity, harshness, rigor, rigour, inclemency, stiffness]
Wikipedia
Hardness is a measure of how resistant solid matter is to various kinds of permanent shape change when a compressive force is applied. Some materials (e.g. metals) are harder than others (e.g. plastics). Macroscopic hardness is generally characterized by strong intermolecular bonds, but the behavior of solid materials under force is complex; therefore, there are different measurements of hardness: scratch hardness, indentation hardness, and rebound hardness.
Hardness is dependent on ductility, elastic stiffness, plasticity, strain, strength, toughness, viscoelasticity, and viscosity.
Common examples of hard matter are ceramics, concrete, certain metals, and superhard materials, which can be contrasted with soft matter.
Usage examples of "hardness".
Arkie to smack other Arkies and the hardness of the human head took its wielder by surprise.
There are two varieties of hardness, one of which is temporary, being due to the presence of carbonic acid gas in the water which holds the salts in solution and may be removed by merely boiling the water and thus expelling the gas when the salts are deposited, while the other is permanent and can only be removed by the distillation of the water.
There was a hardness about Miss Dunstable when matters of business were concerned on which it seemed almost impossible to make any impression.
Rachel continued working his cock, reveling in the feel of his satiny hardness, until Eros pulled her away.
It was of bare stone, too steep and too flintlike in hardness to support the green stain of jungle growth.
Behind the veneer of her charming old-lady manner, I caught a glimpse of flintlike hardness.
This cut was of bare stone, too steep and too flintlike in hardness to support even a trace of green growth.
There were fine lines at the corners of his mouth that deepened when he grinned, and his eyes, though their coloring had not changed, the flintlike hardness of them had.
She met his dark gaze with a quickening in her heart, then she noticed the flintlike hardness in his face.
The reason for this is easily perceived: it lies in the fact that the rocks over which the stream flows are guided in the cutting which they effect by the diversities of hardness in the strata that they encounter.
Both he and Lehmann stared at Wyatt, astonished by the sudden hardness in his face, the uncharacteristic violence of the gesture.
The Dutch illuminators, however, may usually be recognised by the Netherlandish character of the miniatures combined with neat and sometimes rigidly careful penmanship in the scrolls and tendrils and a hardness in the outline of the flowers.
He could feel her body, soft and pliant, every curve pressed snugly into the hardness of his own powerful frame, and he savored the differences between a man and a woman.
Quite from where she had gained the knowledge that the tip of her tongue tracing the outline of his lips, lingering provocatively on the bottom one and slipping between their parted hardness, would make him groan in protest and then draw her tongue into the heat of his mouth, his control splintering so that she could almost feel the desire running like quick silver through his veins, she had no idea, but gained it she most definitely had.
By late afternoon, the sun and an incessant wind had dried it to a cementlike hardness, creating ruts and ridges to trip and stumble over.