HARSHNESS
severity, severeness, harshness, rigor, rigour, rigorousness, rigourousness, inclemency, hardness, stiffness
(noun) excessive sternness; “severity of character”; “the harshness of his punishment was inhuman”; “the rigors of boot camp”
cruelty, cruelness, harshness
(noun) the quality of being cruel and causing tension or annoyance
harshness, abrasiveness, scratchiness
(noun) the roughness of a substance that causes abrasions
harshness, roughness
(noun) the quality of being harsh or rough or grating to the senses
Source: WordNet® 3.1
Etymology
Noun
harshness (countable and uncountable, plural harshnesses)
The quality of being harsh.
She wakened in sharp panic, bewildered by the grotesquerie of some half-remembered dream in contrast with the harshness of inclement fact, drowsily realising that since she had fallen asleep it had come on to rain smartly out of a shrouded sky.
Source: Wiktionary
Harsh"ness, n.
Definition: The quality or state of being harsh. O, she is Ten times more gentle than her father 's crabbed, And he's composed of harshness. Shak. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense, The sound must seem an echo to the sense. Pope.
Syn.
– Acrimony; roughness; sternness; asperity; tartness. See Acrimony.
Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition
Recent Word Finds
Word of the Day
12 January 2025
HABIT
(noun) (psychology) an automatic pattern of behavior in reaction to a specific situation; may be inherited or acquired through frequent repetition; “owls have nocturnal habits”; “she had a habit twirling the ends of her hair”; “long use had hardened him to it”
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