Severity

//səˈvɛɹəti// noun

noun ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The state of being severe. countable, uncountable

    "[…] the fear of God whereof ' tis written Keeper : But not the fear of punishment for sin And I can see that the uncertainty In which we act is a severity , A cruelty , amounting to injustice That nothing but God's mercy can assuage . […]"

  2. 2
    excessive sternness wordnet
  3. 3
    The degree of something undesirable; badness or seriousness. countable, uncountable

    "The severity of the offence merits a long prison sentence."

  4. 4
    extreme plainness wordnet
  5. 5
    something hard to endure wordnet
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  1. 6
    used of the degree of something undesirable e.g. pain or weather wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
asperityseverenessabruptnessabsolute zeroabsolutenessabusiveness

Example

More examples

"The severity of such marks can reveal whether or not any of these people were habitually engaged in hard labor."

Etymology

From Middle English severity, from Middle French severite (modern French sévérité), from Latin sevēritās. By surface analysis, severe + -ity.

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