hardy

From Middle English hardy, hardi, from Old French hardi (“hardy, daring, stout, bold”).

Old French hardi is usually regarded as the past participle of hardir ("to harden, be bold, make bold"; compare Occitan ardir, Italian ardire), from Frankish *hardijan; but it may also have come directly from Frankish *hardi, a secondary form of Frankish *hard (compare Old High German harti, herti, secondary forms of Old High German hart (“hard”)); or even yet from Frankish *hardig (compare Middle Low German herdich (“persevering”), Old Danish hærdig, Norwegian herdig, Swedish härdig (“vigorous, courageous”)).

Cognate with hard. May have at some point also been surface analysed as hard + -y.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈhɑɹdi/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈhɑːdi/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)di

hardy (comparative hardier, superlative hardiest)

1. Having rugged physical strength; inured to fatigue or hardships.

   Synonyms: hearty, robust, rugged, strong

   • 1824, R. W. Dickson, “Hogs or Swine § Swing-tailed Breed or Sort”, in A Complete System of Improved Live Stock and Cattle Management; […] ‎, volume 2, London, →OCLC, page 287:

     It is an useful sort of the smaller kind of hogs, that is hardy in its nature and of considerable weight in proportion to its size.

   • 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian‎:

     Even adding 1mm of thickness to the cardboard, to make it hardier, might use up a substantial forest when multiplied across hundreds of billions of boxes.

2. (botany) Able to survive adverse growing conditions.

   Synonyms: hearty, robust, rugged, strong

   A hardy plant is one that can withstand the extremes of climate, such as frost.

   • 1880, Arthur Herbert Church, Food: Some Account of Its Sources, Constituents and Uses‎, London: Chapman and Hall, page 72:

     The oat is hardier than wheat, and ripens in higher latitudes.

   • 2012, David L. Culp, The Layered Garden: Design Lessons for Year-Round Beauty from Brandywine Cottage, Timber Press, page 503:

     By watching where the snow melted first, I discovered warmer spots that I knew would be possible locations for late-winter bloomers or borderline hardy plants.

3. Brave and resolute.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 354:

     But he was not ſo hardy to abide
     That bitter ſtownd, but turning quicke aſide
     His light-foot beaſt, fled faſt away for feare:

4. Impudent.

• foolhardy

hardy (plural hardies)

1. (usually in the plural) Anything, especially a plant, that is hardy.
   • 2009 June 1, David Carr, “Cast Out, but Still Reporting”, in New York Times‎:

     Across the country, various bands of journalistic hardies — newsroom pros whose services are no longer salient to a crippled and disrupted information economy — have taken matters into their own hands.

2. A blacksmith's fuller or chisel, having a square shank for insertion into a square hole in an anvil, called the hardy hole.

• Hydra, hydra

From Old French hardi.

hardy m (feminine singular hardye, masculine plural hardys, feminine plural hardyes)

1. hardy (having rugged physical strength)

• French: hardi

Borrowed from Czech hrdý. Displaced and doublet of gardy, an inherited form.

• IPA^(key): /ˈxar.dɨ/

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ardɨ
• Syllabification: har‧dy

hardy (comparative bardziej hardy, superlative najbardziej hardy, adverb hardo)

1. haughty, supercilious, arrogant

   Synonyms: butny, dumny

• → Kashubian: hardy

• hardy in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• hardy in Polish dictionaries at PWN
• Wanda Decyk-Zięba, editor (2018-2022), “hardy”, in Dydaktyczny Słownik Etymologiczno-historyczny Języka Polskiego [A Didactic, Historical, Etymological Dictionary of the Polish Language] (in Polish)