Library / English Dictionary

HARSHNESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Excessive sternness

Example:

the rigors of boot camp

Synonyms:

hardness; harshness; inclemency; rigor; rigorousness; rigour; rigourousness; severeness; severity; stiffness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("harshness" is a kind of...):

sternness; strictness (uncompromising resolution)

Derivation:

harsh (sharply disagreeable; rigorous)

harsh (unpleasantly stern)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The quality of being cruel and causing tension or annoyance

Synonyms:

cruelness; cruelty; harshness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("harshness" is a kind of...):

malevolence; malevolency; malice (the quality of threatening evil)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "harshness"):

brutality; ferociousness; savagery; viciousness (the trait of extreme cruelty)

murderousness (cruelty evidence by a capability to commit murder)

Derivation:

harsh (unkind or cruel or uncivil)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The roughness of a substance that causes abrasions

Synonyms:

abrasiveness; harshness; scratchiness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("harshness" is a kind of...):

raggedness; roughness (a texture of a surface or edge that is not smooth but is irregular and uneven)

Derivation:

harsh (of textures that are rough to the touch or substances consisting of relatively large particles)

Sense 4

Meaning:

The quality of being harsh or rough or grating to the senses

Synonyms:

harshness; roughness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("harshness" is a kind of...):

unpleasantness (the quality of giving displeasure)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "harshness"):

gruffness; hoarseness; huskiness (a throaty harshness)

Derivation:

harsh (unpleasantly rough or jarring to the senses)

Credits

 Context examples: 

As he listened to her, there rang in the ears of his memory the harsh cries of barbarian women and of hags, and, in lesser degrees of harshness, the strident voices of working women and of the girls of his own class.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't been there before.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)