harshness

English edit

From Middle English harsknes; equivalent to harsh +‎ -ness.

harshness (countable and uncountable, plural harshnesses)

The quality of being harsh.
- 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles‎^[1], 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.

quality of being harsh