Plural of hard; in textiles, the stiff fibers or woody parts of flax or hemp that remain after processing; also archaic for hard substances generally.
From Old English 'heard,' originally meaning simply hard things or hard substances. In textile manufacturing, 'hards' became a technical term for the by-products of fiber processing.
Before synthetic fibers, processing flax into linen involved beating the plant to separate soft fibers from 'hards'—those waste products were so useful they were made into everything from rope to insulation, wasting nothing.
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