harsh
Definitions
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WordNet 3.6
- adj harsh sharply disagreeable; rigorous "the harsh facts of court delays","an abrasive character"
- adj harsh severe "a harsh penalty"
- adj harsh unkind or cruel or uncivil "had harsh words","a harsh and unlovable old tyrant","a rough answer"
- adj harsh unpleasantly stern "wild and harsh country full of hot sand and cactus","the nomad life is rough and hazardous"
- adj harsh 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"
- adj harsh of textures that are rough to the touch or substances consisting of relatively large particles "coarse meal","coarse sand","a coarse weave"
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Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
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Interesting fact: Michelangelo's Last Judgment, which hangs on the walls of the Sistine Chapel, drew some harsh criticism from one of the Vatican's officials because of the nudity. So Michelangelo made some changes to his work: he painted in the face of the complaining clergyman and added a donkey's ears and a snake's tail.
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- Harsh disagreeable to the ear.
- Harsh disagreeable to the taste.
- Harsh disagreeable to the touch.
- Harsh (Painting, Drawing, etc) Having violent contrasts of color, or of light and shade; lacking in harmony.
- Harsh Rough; disagreeable; grating
- Harsh Unpleasant and repulsive to the sensibilities; austere; crabbed; morose; abusive; abusive; severe; rough. "Clarence is so harsh , so blunt.""Though harsh the precept, yet the preacher charmed."
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Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
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Interesting fact: During the Renaissance blond hair became so much de rigueur in Venice that a brunette was not to be seen except among the working classes. Venetian women spent hours dyeing and burnishing their hair until they achieved the harsh metallic glitter that was considered a necessity.
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- harsh Rough to the touch or to any of the senses; sharp or sour to the taste, discordant to the ear, inharmonious to the eye, etc.; grating; rasping; acrid; irritating: as, a harsh surface; harsh fruit; a harsh voice; a harsk combination of colors.
- harsh Hard or severe in effect; of such a nature as to be repellent from any physical point of view.
- harsh Repugnant to the mind or the sensibilities; mentally or morally forbidding; hard to bear, endure, resolve upon, etc.
- harsh Austere in character or severe in action; stern; hard; unkind.
- harsh Synonyms and Severe, Rigorous, etc. (see austere); acrimonious, ill-natured, ill-tempered, uncivil, ungracious, churlish, brutal.
- harsh To sound harshly; crack.
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Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
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- adj Harsh härsh rough: bitter: jarring: abusive: severe: unkind
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Quotations
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“Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.” -
“Harsh necessity, and the newness of my kingdom, force me to do such things and to guard my frontiers everywhere.” -
“No cause has he to say his doom is harsh, who's made the master of his destiny.” -
“What harsh judges fathers are to all young men!”
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“Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him.” -
“A pleasant illusion is better than a harsh reality.”
Etymology
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
OE. harsk,; akin to G. harsch, Dan. harsk, rancid, Sw. härsk,; from the same source as E. hard,. See Hard (a.)
Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
M. E. harsk, a northern word; cf. Sw. härsk and Dan. harsk, rancid, Ger. harsch, hard.
Usage
In literature:
And does my experience contradict this harsh but common fame?
"Henrietta Temple A Love Story" by Benjamin Disraeli
You must not mingle in the world's harsh and jarring tumult.
"Essays on Scandinavian Literature" by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
The next moment the bosom of Densuke's dress was harshly grasped, and he himself was forced down on the floor.
"The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari" by James S. De Benneville
Harsh his lordship's tone, harsh his words.
"Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House)" by James S. De Benneville
Pinks, the member for Harsh?
"The Tragic Muse" by Henry James
It is necessary that nations learn by harsh experience the enormous disadvantage of despoiling each other.
"Sophisms of the Protectionists" by Frederic Bastiat
A repressed nature of this type will, in seeking such a compensation, escape from the harsh reality into the realm of dreams.
"The Necessity of Atheism" by Dr. D.M. Brooks
He could even stand the harsh lines and lights of evening clothes.
"The Coast of Chance" by Esther Chamberlain
True, I had been treated with harshness, but I had no right to rebel as I had done.
"Ernest Linwood" by Caroline Lee Hentz
The sun was a harsh ball of heat baking the ground and then, in some odd manner, drawing back that same fieriness.
"Storm Over Warlock" by Andre Norton
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In poetry:
And if O'Hanlon's daughter
Will give me a welcome kind,
O never will my sail be turned
To a harsh and a heavy wind!
Will give me a welcome kind,
O never will my sail be turned
To a harsh and a heavy wind!
"Girls Spinning" by Padraic Colum
Peace!
Cease!
Such thoughts as these
Send all their harshness hissing through my song
And do my voice irreparable wrong.
Cease!
Such thoughts as these
Send all their harshness hissing through my song
And do my voice irreparable wrong.
"Before Sunrise" by Maurice Thompson
Poor Joe! I know he cannot sing--
His voice is somewhat harsh:
But he can whistle loud and clear
As plover in the marsh.
His voice is somewhat harsh:
But he can whistle loud and clear
As plover in the marsh.
"Poor Joe" by Sarah Anne Curzon
Like the clangour of a bell,
Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet.
That is how he learnt so well
To take the roses for his meat.
Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet.
That is how he learnt so well
To take the roses for his meat.
"Another Song Of A Fool" by William Butler Yeats
Where sorrow would never reach her
Nor harsh words smite her ear;
Nor her eyes in death dimmed slumber
Would ever shed a tear.
Nor harsh words smite her ear;
Nor her eyes in death dimmed slumber
Would ever shed a tear.
"A Little Child Shall Lead Them" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Up the harsh rock so steep and slim'd,
The mourner had to roam,
And faint on tott'ring feet she clim'd
To seek her lover's home.
The mourner had to roam,
And faint on tott'ring feet she clim'd
To seek her lover's home.
"The Lass Of Fair Wone" by Charlotte Dacre
In news:
Noise, Vibration & Harshness : Off-Road, Through The Canyons Of My Land Roving Mind Photo Gallery.
Noise, Vibration & Harshness : Something Is Rotten In The State Of Tennessee.
Noise, Vibration & Harshness : It Ain't Broken, It's Fixed Photo Gallery.
Polymers, Elastomers and Two-Component Foams Seal, Reduce Noise Vibration and Harshness , Reduce Vehicle Weight, and Provide Easy Application.
In recent days, one or two (thousand) of you have suggested I might have been a bit harsh in my assessment of the Chicago Bears' performance in Sunday's 19-14 victory over the Detroit Lions.
Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress on Thursday he won't play " hide and seek " with secret memos about harsh interrogations of terror suspects and their effectiveness.
Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress on Thursday he won't play "hide and seek" with secret memos about harsh interrogations of terror suspects and their effectiveness.
With the Aussie rocker dishing out and then clarifying his harsh words for the show's cover of "Somebody That I Used to Know," the series' exec.
Harsh West Bank ' honor killing ' brings tougher law.
The new mapping application on Apple's recently-released iOS 6 has fallen under harsh criticism for, to put it simply, being a really bad app.
Nomads' land: Hospitable shepherds welcome visitors to Mongolia's harsh steppes.
North Country residents are certainly no strangers to harsh, dangerous, unpredictable weather.
Once again the country is considering harsh punishments for something that shouldn't be considered a crime at all.
There were reasons to be skeptical: not just the harshness of his interrogation, but because the Pakistanis had convicted several men, including Shaikh, for the murder, none of whom implicated KSM.
The message implicitly fit in with Romney's harsh rhetoric on Iran.
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In science:
Finally, if the CCDs contain a significant density of traps even before they are launched into the harsh radiation environment of space, the CTI will be worse throughout, and the useful mission lifetime reduced.
The effects of charge transfer inefficiency (CTI) on galaxy shape measurements
Full functionality of such detectors over the lifetime of an experiment in a harsh radiation environment is of prime concern to the involved experimenters.
Summary and Outlook of the International Workshop on Aging Phenomena in Gaseous Detectors (DESY, Hamburg, October, 2001)
In addition, strong dependences of the aging properties on high voltage and progressive deterioration of the gas gain in the direction of the serial gas flow have been observed for large-scale prototypes irradiated with Ar/C F4 /CH4 (67:30:3) in the harsh HERA-B environment.
Summary and Outlook of the International Workshop on Aging Phenomena in Gaseous Detectors (DESY, Hamburg, October, 2001)
However, beginning in the 1930s, it became clear that “harsh” cutoff functions like χ[ε,x+ε] are no more useful from a technical point of view than the type of test functions we allow in (1.12).
Automorphic Distributions, L-functions, and Voronoi Summation for GL(3)
Given that most low-mass stars are born in OB associations (McKee & Williams 1997), it is important to study disk evolution in such harsh environments.
The Masses of the Orion Proplyds from Submillimeter Dust Emission
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