harsh
Meanings
Adjective Satellite
- unpleasantly stern
- "wild and harsh country full of hot sand and cactus"
- disagreeable to the senses
- "the harsh cry of a blue jay"
- "harsh cognac"
- "the harsh white light makes you screw up your eyes"
- "harsh irritating smoke filled the hallway"
- unkind or cruel or uncivil
- "had harsh words"
- "a harsh and unlovable old tyrant"
- severe
- "a harsh penalty"
- sharply disagreeable; rigorous
- "the harsh facts of court delays"
Adjective
- of textures that are rough to the touch or substances consisting of relatively large particles
Adj
- Unpleasantly rough to the touch or other senses.
- Severe or cruel.
Verb
- To negatively criticize.
- To put a damper on (a mood).
Origin / Etymology
From Middle English harsk, harisk(e), hask(e), herris. Century derived the term from Old Norse harskr (whence Danish harsk (“rancid”), dialectal Norwegian hersk, Swedish härsk); the Middle English Dictionary derives it from that and Middle Low German harsch (“rough”, literally “hairy”) (whence also German harsch), from haer (“hair”), from Old Saxon hār, from Proto-West Germanic *hār; the Oxford Dictionary of English derives it from Middle Low German alone.
Synonyms
abrasive, asperous, callous, coarse, cold, cold-eyed, dour, flint-hearted, forbidding, frosty, gimped, grim, hard, hard-boiled, hardened, hardhearted, harsh, heartless, humorless, icy, insensitive, iron-hearted, irregular, jagged, jaggy, rigorous, rockhearted, rough, rugged, rugose, salebrous, scabrous, scraggy, severe, shagged, squarrose, stern, stonehearted, stony, stonyhearted, strict, tough, uneven, unmoved, unsmooth, unsympathetic
Scrabble Score: 11
harsh is a valid Scrabble (US) TWL wordharsh is a valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
harsh is a valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary