hards
- 1Plural of hard.
Crews beached their dinghies on the stone hards that lined the estuary.
Two of the old hards have washed away since the harbor was rebuilt.
Note
The plural belongs only to the countable nouns: the firm beaches or slopes where boats are hauled out of the water, and the tires whose compound sits between mediums and superhards. The slang uses, crack cocaine and hard labor, are uncountable and take no plural. Spelled the same but unrelated is the flax-fiber word, which grew from a different root altogether.
- 2The short, coarser fibers of flax or hemp separated from the longer strands, also known as tow.
She spun the hards into a rough thread suited only for sacking.
The mill sold its hards cheaply for stuffing mattresses and packing crates.
Note
A fiber named for the comb that separates it. The word runs back through Middle English herdes to Old English heordan, "hards of flax, tow", and ultimately to a root meaning "to comb, card". It was already a plural in Old English, yet it names a loose mass rather than separate pieces. In use it is uncountable: you buy some hards, never three hards.
hards is a form of hard
hard, noun: A sentence of hard labor, usually after a stated number of years. Full entry
- Forms
- hardhards plural
- Spelling
- hard → hards: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
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Origin
From Middle English herdes (plural of herde, "piece of hards"), from Old English heordan ("hards of flax, tow"), tracing back through Proto-Germanic *hezdǭ to the Proto-Indo-European root *kes- ("to comb, card").