pachydermy

Noun

pachydermy (uncountable)

1. A condition in which the skin thickens and becomes hardened or verrucous.
   • If, as the inflammation recurs, the pachydermy spread beyond the point originally attacked, all the different grades of the disease are often exhibited simultaneously in the same extremity.1883, Felix von Niemeyer, A Text-book of Practical Medicine
   • Here in Edinburgh, whether on account of the pachydermy of its people or because the secretion is less virulent than it is elsewhere, cases of dermatitis caused by the plant are few.1917, Botanical Society of Edinburgh, Transactions - Botanical Society of Edinburgh - Volume 26, page 302
2. Insensitivity.
   • The haughty foreign secretary, to whom for the next fifty years all stories of aristocratic pachydermy were attached, was still to come.1972, Wayland Kennet, Preservation, page 35
   • Their blood, sweat, toil and tears go unheeded, their personhood neglected, and their developmental contribution atrophied, in the ballyhoo of politics and the pachydermy of the bureaucracy.1982, V. R. Krishna Iyer, Law, Justice, and the Disabled, page 10