- to make solid, rigid, or firm
- to make callous: to harden one's heart
- to accustom to varying or adverse conditions or climate
Origin of hardenMiddle English hardnen ; from Old Norse harthna and amp; ; from Middle English hard, hard
verbhard·ened, hard·en·ing, hard·ens
- To make hard or harder: harden steel.
- To enable to withstand physical or mental hardship: was hardened by years of working as a farmer.
- To make unfeeling, unsympathetic, or callous: The betrayal hardened his heart against intimacy.
- To make fixed, settled, or less subject to change: “The incident only hardened existing attitudes while vanquishing any hope of collaboration” (Philip Dray).
- To make less vulnerable to attack by surrounding with earth or concrete: harden missile silos.
- To become hard or harder.
- To become fixed, settled, or less subject to change: “Her early skepticism has hardened into cynicism” (Kelly Braffet).
- To become inured.
- To take on a disapproving or severe appearance: His face hardened with suspicion.
- To rise and become stable. Used of prices.
(third-person singular simple present hardens, present participle hardening, simple past and past participle hardened)
From hard + -en.
harden - Computer Definition
To put a shell around a computer to protect it from intruders. To harden a system, the following techniques need to be done: The Operating System Software and the exposed services should be patched with the latest security fixes; the defaults should be removed; all unnecessary services should be shut down; and packet-filtering software should be installed.
Graham, R. Hacking Lexicon. [Online, 2001.] Robert Graham Website. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/resource_files/documentation/hacking-dict.html.