Severe

//sɪˈvɪɹ// adj, name

adj, name ·Very common ·Middle school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Very bad or intense.

    "In the severer cases of hookworm the patient sometimes has an appetite for soil, paper, hair, clay, chalk, starch, and other unpalatables."

  2. 2
    Strict or harsh.

    "a severe taskmaster"

  3. 3
    Sober, plain in appearance, austere.

    "a severe old maiden aunt"

Adjective
  1. 1
    causing fear or anxiety by threatening great harm wordnet
  2. 2
    very bad in degree or extent wordnet
  3. 3
    unsparing and uncompromising in discipline or judgment wordnet
  4. 4
    intensely or extremely bad or unpleasant in degree or quality wordnet
  5. 5
    severely simple wordnet
Show 1 more definition
  1. 6
    very strong or vigorous wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.

Synonyms

All synonyms
austerebrutalextremehardharshheavy

Example

More examples

"Mr Yoshida is too severe with his children."

Etymology

From Middle French, from Latin severus (“severe, serious, grave in demeanor”).

Related phrases

severe acute respiratory syndromesevere clearsevere combined immunodeficiencysevere fever with thrombocytopenia syndromesevere galesevere myoclonic epilepsy of infancysevere tea

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.