Word.ws English Dictionary

harden up

harden up verb: to tighten up a sailboat's sheets in order to prevent luffing.

Verb

harden up (third-person singular simple present hardens up, present participle hardening up, simple past and past participle hardened up)

  1. (UK) To tighten up a sailboat's sheets in order to prevent luffing.
  2. (informal, transitive) To become or make (something, someone) hard, either literally or figuratively.

Forms of harden up

third-person singular presenthardens up
present participlehardening up
past participlehardened up
pasthardened up

Questions about harden up

What does harden up mean?
Harden up means to tighten up a sailboat's sheets in order to prevent luffing.
What part of speech is harden up?
Harden up is a verb.
What is the past tense of harden up?
The past tense of harden up is hardened up.

Words near harden up in the dictionary

  1. Hardeman County
  2. Hardemans
  3. harden
  4. harden one's neck
  5. harden someone's heart
  6. harden up
  7. harden'd
  8. hardenabilities
  9. hardenability
  10. hardenable
  11. Hardenberg

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: harden up (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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