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asperity

noun

Simple meaning

Being difficult or unpleasant to experience.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

uhspehrihtee

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

əsˈpɛɹɪti

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. figurativeuncountable

    The quality of being difficult or unpleasant to experience; (countable) a thing that is harsh and difficult to endure; a difficulty, a hardship.

  2. figurativeuncountable

    The quality of being harsh or severe in the way one behaves or speaks toward another person; (countable, chiefly in the plural) a deeply hostile or resentful feeling; an animosity, a hatred.

  3. uncountable

    The quality of having a rough or uneven surface; roughness, unevenness; (countable, chiefly in the plural) a protruding or rough area or point on a surface; a protrusion.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C2 · Proficient (estimated)
Typical Use
Rare

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: (uncountable) The quality of being difficult or unpleasant to experience; (countable) a thing that is harsh and difficult to endure; a difficulty, a hardship.

Used this way, asperity is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It carries more force than its gentler alternatives. It turns up most in personal or emotional discussion and literature or storytelling contexts.

Emotional tone
Negative
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Strong
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Serious and weighty
Usage feel
Everyday but emotionally strong

Where it naturally appears

  • Personal/emotional discussion
  • Literature/storytelling

Nearby words

  • rigor , a specialist term, precise but narrower

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use asperity

  • “The asperity of northern winters.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

some asperitygreat asperityasperity contactconsiderable asperitysingle asperityasperity heightcertain asperityasperity model

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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: being difficult or unpleasant to experience

hardship

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.