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say it: HAHRD-nuhs
hardness is a noun meaning "the property of being rigid and resistant to pressure; not easily scratched; measured on Mohs scale". It carries 5 recorded senses.
the property of being rigid and resistant to pressure; not easily scratched; measured on Mohs scale
a quality of water that contains dissolved mineral salts that prevent soap from lathering
“the costs of reducing hardness depend on the relative amounts of calcium and magnesium compounds that are present”
devoid of passion or feeling; hardheartedness
the quality of being difficult to do
“he assigned a series of problems of increasing hardness”
“the ruggedness of his exams caused half the class to fail”
excessive sternness
“severity of character”
“the harshness of his punishment was inhuman”
“the rigors of boot camp”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for hardness come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.