hardpack
hardpack noun: a material (such as dirt, gravel, or snow) compressed into a hard, smooth surface for roads etc.
Noun
hardpack (countable and uncountable, plural hardpacks)
- A material (such as dirt, gravel, or snow) compressed into a hard, smooth surface for roads etc.
- The muzzle was filled for some inches with hardpack snow, after he had dug that out with his knife, he found the lock frozen up and snow all over the nipple.1918, The Industrial Enterprise, volume 25, number 4, page 1
- Field reports indicate that the new cutting edge here pictured performs exceptionally well in rock, shale, limestone, hardpack clay, sandstone and other tight formations.1958, Roads and Streets, volume 101, page 131
- A hard package, especially of cigarettes.
- That's where she met Vic--tall, hawkfaced, blackhaired, wearing tight Levis and a black T-shirt with the pocket over his heart stretched around a hardpack box of Parliaments.1978, Russell Banks, The New World: Tales, page 25
- Anderson came over to me and I noticed his ammo bandoliers were full of Marlboro hardpacks.2005, Shane A. Bernskoetter, Surviving Twilight
Examples of hardpack in a sentence
- Unlike powder, hardpack permits great speed (no spiny arms on those balls of ice to drag on your ski bottom).1995 February, Ski, page 36:
- Outside, Billy broke the cellophane on a hardpack of Marlboro Reds, tore out the foil, and extracted a cigarette.2008, George P. Pelecanos, The Turnaround:
Antonyms of hardpack
- softpack
Forms of hardpack
| plural | hardpacks |
|---|
Origin of hardpack
From hard + pack.
Questions about hardpack
- What does hardpack mean?
- Hardpack means a material (such as dirt, gravel, or snow) compressed into a hard, smooth surface for roads etc.
- How do you use hardpack in a sentence?
- Unlike powder, hardpack permits great speed (no spiny arms on those balls of ice to drag on your ski bottom).
- What part of speech is hardpack?
- Hardpack is a noun.
- What is the plural of hardpack?
- The plural of hardpack is hardpacks.
Words near hardpack in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hardpack (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “hardpack.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hardpack. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.