Word.ws English Dictionary

hardening up

hardening up is the present participle and gerund of harden up.

Meaning of harden up

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.

Questions about hardening up

What is hardening up the present participle and gerund of?
Hardening up is the present participle and gerund of harden up.

Words near hardening up in the dictionary

  1. hardeneth
  2. Hardengreen
  3. hardening
  4. hardening one's neck
  5. hardening someone's heart
  6. hardening up
  7. hardenings
  8. hardenite
  9. Hardenne
  10. hardens
  11. hardens one's neck

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hardening up (page history and authors); 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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