Harsh
adj, name, verb, slang ·Very common ·Middle school level
Definitions
- 1 To negatively criticize. ambitransitive, slang
"Quit harshing me already, I said that I was sorry!"
- 2 To put a damper on (a mood). ambitransitive, slang
"Dude, you're harshing my buzz."
- 1 Unpleasantly rough to the touch or other senses.
- 2 Severe or cruel.
"harsh decision"
- 1 sharply disagreeable; rigorous wordnet
- 2 severe wordnet
- 3 unkind or cruel or uncivil wordnet
- 4 unpleasantly stern wordnet
- 5 unpleasantly rough or jarring to the senses wordnet
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- 6 of textures that are rough to the touch or substances consisting of relatively large particles wordnet
- 1 A surname.
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"In this harsh, petty world where money does the talking, his way of life is like a breath of fresh air."
Etymology
From Middle English harsk, harisk(e), hask(e), herris. Century derived the term from Old Norse harskr (whence Danish harsk (“rancid”), dialectal Norwegian hersk, Swedish härsk); the Middle English Dictionary derives it from that and Middle Low German harsch (“rough”, literally “hairy”) (whence also German harsch), from haer (“hair”), from Old Saxon hār, from Proto-West Germanic *hār; the Oxford Dictionary of English derives it from Middle Low German alone.
From the German surname, Americanized from Harsch, from the adjective harsch.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.