harsh
/ˈhäːʃ/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.14 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Unpleasantly rough to the touch or other senses.
name
A surname.
Example Sentences
- "harsh decision"
- "harsh penalty"
- "harsh teacher"
- "harsh rule"
- "harsh ruling"
- "Partly because of the heavy burden of government debt built up during his stewardship, and the uncurbed recklessness of the country’s banks, Britain’s recession is already the harshest in Western Europe."
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, Swedish härsken); 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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: harsk, harskr, harsch, hār, *hār, -
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈhäːʃ/
- British English: /ˈhɑːʃ/
Usage
Inflected Forms
harsher (comparative)
more harsh (comparative)
harshest (superlative)
most harsh (superlative)
harshes (present, singular)
harshing (participle, present)
harshed (participle, past)
harshed (past)
Harshes (plural)