toughen

[tuhf-uhn]

verb (used with object), verb (used without object)

to make or become tough or tougher.

Origin:
1575–85; tough + -en¹

Related forms

tough·en·er, noun

Synonyms
harden, firm, strengthen, stiffen.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Toughen is one of our favorite verbs.

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to bark; yelp.

to steal or take dishonestly (money, esp. public funds, or property entrusted to one's care); embezzle.

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Collins

World English Dictionary

toughen (ˈtʌfən)

—vb
	to make or become tough or tougher

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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"Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our civilized history appears the chronicle of debility, of fashion, and the arts of luxury. But the civilized man misses no real refinement in the poetry of the rudest era. It reminds him that civilization does but dress men. It makes shoes, but it does not toughen the soles of the feet. It makes cloth of finer texture, but it does not touch the skin. Inside the civilized man stands the savage still in the place of honor. We are those blue-eyed, yellow-haired Saxons, those slender, dark-haired Normans."

-Henry David Thoreau