Word of the Day for Thursday January 13, 2005
indurate \IN-dur-it; -dyur-\, adjective: Physically or morally hardened; unfeeling; stubborn.
transitive verb: 1. To make hard; to harden. 2. To harden against; to make hardy; to habituate. 3. To make hardened; to make callous or stubborn. 4. To establish; to fix firmly.
intransitive verb: 1. To grow hard; to harden. 2. To become established or fixed.
They are completely
indurate. They aren't hard-nosed; they live without any sense of malice. There is no time or need for others.
--John Stone, "Evil in the Early Cinema of Oliver Stone," Journal of Popular Film and Television, Summer 2000
First off, the avoid-terminal-prepositions rule is the invention of one Fr. R. Lowth, an eighteenth-century British preacher and
indurate pedant who did things like spend scores of pages arguing for hath over the trendy and degenerate has.
--David Foster Wallace, "Tense Present," Harper's Magazine, April 2001
New findings in science point toward a buoyant view of our being: one in which life is favored, not improbable, and the universe a welcoming place, not an
indurate domain.
--Gregg Easterbrook, "Science sees the light," New Republic, October 12, 1998
Only an exceptionally strong personality or a criminal
indurated by bitter experience can withstand prolonged, skillful interrogation in silence.
--Charles E. O'Hara and Gregory L. O'Hara, Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation
The terrain he walked over still looked like sand, but the sand was cemented together, firm as concrete.
Indurated soil.
--Geoffrey A. Landis, Mars Crossing
But "hard cheeses
indurate, soft cheeses collapse." (Flaubert's Parrot). People don't change, they set in.
--Antonia Quirke, "Jack of all trades," New Statesman, October 29, 2001
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Indurate is derived from the past participle of Latin indurare, from in-, intensive prefix + durare, "to harden," from durus, "hard."