harsh.
Unpleasantly rough to the touch or other senses.
Meaning & usage
Unpleasantly rough to the touch or other senses.
Severe or cruel.
harsh decision
harsh penalty
Where this word comes from
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, Swedish härsken); 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.
To negatively criticize.
Quit harshing me already, I said that I was sorry!
To put a damper on (a mood).
Dude, you're harshing my buzz.
They're always harshing on the plan, but we're still going through with it.
Where this word comes from
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, Swedish härsken); 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.
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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.