asperity.
The quality of having a rough or uneven surface; roughness, unevenness; (countable, chiefly in the plural) a protruding or rough area or point on a surface; a protrusion.
Meaning & usage
The quality of having a rough or uneven surface; roughness, unevenness; (countable, chiefly in the plural) a protruding or rough area or point on a surface; a protrusion.
The quality of having a rough or uneven surface; roughness, unevenness; (countable, chiefly in the plural) a protruding or rough area or point on a surface; a protrusion. A section of a fault line with high friction, such that there is no movement along this part of the fault except during an earthquake.
The quality of being difficult or unpleasant to experience; (countable) a thing that is harsh and difficult to endure; a difficulty, a hardship.
the asperity of Maine’s winter
The quality of being harsh or severe in the way one behaves or speaks toward another person; (countable, chiefly in the plural) a deeply hostile or resentful feeling; an animosity, a hatred.
Of sound: gratingness, harshness.
Of taste: harshness or sharpness; acridity, tartness.
Of writing: a lack of elegance and refinement; inelegance, roughness.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English asprete, asperite, from Old French aspreté (modern French âpreté), from Latin asperitātem, the accusative singular of asperitās (“roughness, unevenness; fierceness, severity; harshness, sharpness; acidity, tartness”), from asper (“coarse, rough, uneven; bitter, fierce harsh; rude, unrefined; etc.”) (probably from Proto-Indo-European *h₂esp- (“to cut”)) + -itās (a variant of -tās (suffix forming feminine abstract nouns indicating a state of being)). The spelling of the English word is influenced directly by Latin asperitātem. Doublet of asperitas.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.