case-hardened 1 of 2

adjective

as in ruthless
having or showing a lack of sympathy or tender feelings a case-hardened homicide detective who has seen it all

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

case-hardened

2 of 2

verb

past tense of case-harden
as in tempered

Related Words

Dissimilar Words

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for case-hardened
  1. ruthless
  2. crystallized
  3. merciless
  4. petrified
  5. stony
Adjective
  • In Kate’s office, Bromilow is Agnes, Kate’s boss, with an apex predator’s instincts and a medieval court’s management style; Macmillan plays Brian an effortlessly charming, quietly ruthless high-flyer; Hill is Georgie, Kate’s cunning rival.
    — Denise Petski, Deadline, 10 Nov. 2026
  • The ruthless county SHEriff has professional-grade acetone running through her veins.
    — Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 5 Nov. 2026
Definition of ruthless
Verb
  • The frustration was recently crystallized in a scorecard produced by a group of MAHA faithful that concluded that the administration partially kept just five of its promises to MAHA — and broke 37.
    — Brinda Adhikari, STAT, 5 Nov. 2026
  • The team’s ideas crystalized into the Huang-Jiang-Oblomkov (HJO) conjecture.
    — Lyndie Chiou, Scientific American, 29 Oct. 2026
Definition of crystallized
Adjective
  • Plump and the Project 2025 gang were merciless in implementing their far-right agenda.
    — Voice of the People, New York Daily News, 12 Nov. 2026
  • The heist dramedy follows a crew of altruistic bank robbers who document their exploits on social media, hoping to galvanize others who share their belief that the American Dream has been hijacked by predatory, merciless institutions.
    — Brian Davids, HollywoodReporter, 10 Nov. 2026
Definition of merciless
Verb
  • The characters are petrified like specimens, expressing and embodying only what fits into the film’s design, with no potential for inconvenient loose ends for viewers to follow outside the frame’s borders.
    — Richard Brody, New Yorker, 20 Oct. 2026
  • The first film follows a group of French high-school students who travel to Naples on a school trip to discover the ruins of Pompeii and the bodies petrified by Vesuvius.
    — Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, 20 May 2026
Definition of petrified
Adjective
  • Oscar Wilde, for example, reposes beneath a hulking deity whose iconoclastic castration, back in 1961, did little to restrain pilgrims seeking to smear red lips across his stony physique.
    — Emily Cox, ARTnews.com, 22 May 2026
  • Instead of looking like a sleek urban loft, the room can quickly start to feel cold, stony, and impersonal.
    — Natasha Bazika, Martha Stewart, 9 May 2026
Definition of stony
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Browse Nearby Words

case-harden
case-hardened
case-hardening
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Case-hardened.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/case-hardened. Accessed 14 Nov. 2026.

Copy Citation
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences

Popular in Grammar & Usage

See More

How to Use 'Who' vs. 'Whom'

31 Useful Rhetorical Devices

More Commonly Misspelled Words

Merriam-Webster’s Great Big List of Words You Love to Hate

'Affect' vs. 'Effect'
See More

Popular in Wordplay

See More

Great Big List of Beautiful and Useless Words, Vol. 5

9 Words That Sound Like Insults But Aren't

The Longest Long Words List

The Words of the Week - Nov. 13

Even More Bird Names that Sound Like Insults (and Sometimes Are)
See More

Popular

See More

How to Use 'Who' vs. 'Whom'

Great Big List of Beautiful and Useless Words, Vol. 5

9 Words That Sound Like Insults But Aren't
See More

Games & Quizzes

See All
Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries. Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.
Quordle Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.
Blossom Pick the best words!
Play Missing Letter: a crossword with a twist. Each of the 25 puzzle words start with a different letter of the alphabet. Which letter is missing?
The Missing Letter A daily crossword with a twist
speech-bubble-untangle
Simplify The Convoluted Expression Quiz A quiz that’s as “uncomplicated as a round de...
See All