hardness

UK/ˈhɑːdnəs/US/ˈhɑɹdnəs/

nounB2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,317 of 15,258leans written

Hardness is how well a mineral resists being scratched. The Mohs scale of hardness, test the hardness, hardness of diamond.

The Mohs scale runs from talc at one to diamond at ten, and it is a ranking rather than a measure — diamond is far more than ten times as hard as talc. Hardness is not toughness: diamond is hard and shatters. Water hardness is a different sense, meaning dissolved minerals.

Definitions of hardness

1nounhardnessHow well a mineral resists being scratched.B2
“Diamond has the greatest hardness of any natural mineral.”

hardness is a physical property.

Where it comes from

Old English heardnes is hard plus -ness. Hard is Germanic and related to the Greek kratos, strength.

Old English
heardnes
Middle English
hardness
English, today
hardness

From Middle English hardness, hardnesse, from Old English heardnes, from heard + -nes, equivalent to hard + -ness.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Rocks & Minerals

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hardness in the wild

Wherever water hardness is a concern, water softening is commonly used to reduce hard water's adverse effects.
Hard water
The hardness scale is expressed in terms of a Brinell hardness value, sometimes referred to as the Brinell hardness number but formally expressed as HBW.
Brinell hardness test
Degrees of general hardness is a unit of water hardness, specifically of general hardness.
DGH
General hardness is a measure of the concentration of divalent metal ions such as calcium (Ca2+) and magnesium (Mg2+) per volume of water.
DGH
The Vickers hardness test was developed in 1921 by Robert L.
Vickers hardness test

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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