Harsh

How to spell harsh

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce harsh

What does harsh mean?

1. adjectiveUnpleasantly rough, severe, or unkind in a way that grates on the senses or feelings.

Harsh in a sentence

• The harsh winter froze the pipes in our flat.

• His manager gave him some harsh feedback during the review.

Where does harsh come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Harsh entered Middle English as harsk, meaning rough or sour to the taste, and was borrowed from a Scandinavian source closely related to Old Norse and Old Danish forms such as harsk, which described something rancid or gone off. The original idea was strongly physical: a taste, sound, or texture that grates on the senses, like sour food or a rasping noise. It is also a relative of the Low German harsch, meaning rough, which points to the shared northern roots of the word. Over time English speakers widened the sense from rough surfaces and bitter flavours to harsh weather, harsh sounds, and finally to harsh treatment and harsh criticism. The spelling is mercifully regular; the trickiest point is simply that the soft ending is the digraph 'sh' rather than a single letter.

How the word is built

• harsh (rough, severe), a single root with no prefix or suffix