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harshness. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
harshness, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
harshness in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
harshness you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Etymology
From Middle English harsknes; equivalent to harsh + -ness.
Noun
harshness (countable and uncountable, plural harshnesses)
- 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, chapter II, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, →OCLC: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.
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