induration

noun indurations · enduration

1. countable, uncountable Hardness. The voice was harder than I had known, and not only in stony reaction to long floods of wholly just selfpity, also roughened with gin and smoke, perhaps also assimilated to New York induration, the hardness of culture as well as of pain.
2. countable, uncountable An enduring presence; fixity. Even the putatively innocuous whimsical shapes and designs of cakes and pastry, notably in Central Europe, retain to this day the phallic concept, the cryptic induration of the aphrodisiac function.
3. countable, uncountable The process of becoming hard.
4. countable, uncountable A hardening of an area of the body as a reaction to inflammation, hyperemia, or neoplastic infiltration.
5. broadly, countable, uncountable An area or part of the body that has undergone such a reaction. Both erythema and induration appear to be adequate indices of tuberculin sensitivity.
6. countable, uncountable The quality of nonfriability; the extent to which a rock does not crumble; rock strength. "Induration is a measure of rock "strength" and is defined as the ratio of the measured frame modulus to the maximum frame modulus allowed by the Gassmann-Biot model." Spratt, R. S.; Goins, N. R. and Fitch, T. J. (1993) "Pseudo-shear — The analysis of AVO." Castagna, John P. and Backus, Milo M. (eds
7. countable, uncountable The process of the strengthening of rocks by heating, compaction or cementation, or a combination thereof. "Induration of carbonate rocks proceeds predominately in the early stages (prior to diagenesis) by compaction and expulsion of fluids." Whittaker, Alun (1985) Formation Evaluation: Geological Procedures Dordrecht : Springer Verlag page 104, isbn 978-94-010-8861-9.