Definition of "vulcanize" []

• To improve the strength, resiliency, and freedom from stickiness and odor of (rubber, for example) by combining with sulfur or other additives in the presence of heat and pressure. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Precisely because a human soul is unstable, and subject to influence, and hardening over time, the Christian tradition has put a great deal of weight on moral and spiritual discipline in order to "vulcanize" the networks that lead to properly ordered emotions, thoughts, and decisions."
• "You've never known, you realize, how to vulcanize rubber to make a tire."
• "They began to export the resin in blocks and in 1869 the three men found a way to vulcanize it into a kind of parrifin."