Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🧱 To harden 🧊 To toughen 😐 Emotionally hard 🪨 To fix firmly
to indurate

to indurate

9.9
To become fixed and hard to change, often about attitudes or customs
  • verb
  • /ˈɪndjʊˌreɪt/
  • Formal
translation icon : afianzarse
  • Each successive postcolonial government has further indurated such colonial discourse and practice.

Examples

  • The long-standing traditions of the community have indurated over generations, making it challenging to introduce new ideas.

  • As the years passed, her once open-minded views became indurated, causing friction with her younger friends.

  • The base of the canal was found to be a bed of densely packed limestone fragments and indurated limestone bedrock.

    Academic text (1997)

  • Over time, his harsh experiences in the war began to indurate his feelings towards others.

Synonyms

to entrench
vsto indurate
45 6.7

To make an idea or belief so strong that it is hard to change

describes natural hardening over time rather than active deliberate establishment
to ossify
vsto indurate
1 9.5

Become fixed or make something fixed and refuse to change

is about becoming firmly established but with less emphasis on extreme rigidity

Antonyms

to adapt
150 3.0

To change your behaviour or ideas to deal with new situations

How Established

to entrench
45 6.7
to indurate
  • Formal
9.9
to harden
27 2.6
to take hold
33 3.8
to emerge
604 4.0

Surface Forms

indurate infinitive
indurated past
indurated past participle
indurating present participle
indurates third person singular

Morphology

indurate = in + dur + ate

The meaning 'become firmly established' is a metaphorical/figurative extension of 'harden', and while morphologically analyzable, the root is not a common standalone English word, so learners may only partially infer the meaning.

Etymology

Indurate comes from Latin durare ('to harden' or 'to last'), the same root as duration and durable, and it suggests turning something into a fixed, hard state. So, when ideas or customs indurate, they become firmly set and hard to change.