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Webster 1913 Edition


Harshness

Harsh′ness

,
Noun.
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
.
Shakespeare
Syn. – Acrimony; roughness; sternness; asperity; tartness. See
Acrimony
.

Webster 1828 Edition


Harshness

H`ARSHNESS

,
Noun.
Roughness to the touch; opposed to softness and smoothness.
1.
Sourness; austereness; as the harshness of fruit.
2.
Roughness to the ear; as the harshness of sound or of a voice, or of verse.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
3.
Roughness of temper; moroseness; crabbedness; peevishness.
4.
Roughness in manner or words; severity; as the harshness of reproof.

Definition 2024


harshness

harshness

English

Noun

harshness (countable and uncountable, plural harshnesses)

  1. The quality of being harsh.
    • 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Part 6:
      And yet these harshnesses are tenderness itself when compared with the universal harshness out of which they grow; the harshness of the position towards the temperament, of the means towards the aims, of to-day towards yesterday, of hereafter towards to-day.
    • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, Nobody, chapter II:
      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.