 |
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Austere \Aus*tere"\, [F. aust['e]re, L. austerus, fr. Gr. ?, fr. ? to parch, dry. Cf. {Sear}.]
1. Sour and astringent; rough to the state; having acerbity; as, an austere crab apple; austere wine.
2. Severe in modes of judging, or living, or acting; rigid; rigorous; stern; as, an austere man, look, life.
From whom the austere Etrurian virtue rose. --Dryden.
3. Unadorned; unembellished; severely simple.
Syn: Harsh; sour; rough; rigid; stern; severe; rigorous; strict.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
austere
adjective
1: severely simple; "a stark interior" [syn: {severe}, {stark}]
2: of a stern or strict bearing or demeanor; forbidding in aspect; "an austere expression"; "a stern face" [syn: {stern}]
3: practicing great self-denial; "Be systematically ascetic...do...something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it"- William James; "a desert nomad's austere life"; "a spartan diet"; "a spartan existence" [syn: {ascetic}, {ascetical}, {spartan}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
153 Moby Thesaurus words for "austere": Albigensian, Catharist, Franciscan, Lenten, Sabbatarian, Spartan, Spartanic, Trappist, Waldensian, abstemious, abstinent, amaroidal, anchoritic, ascetic, astringent, authoritarian, bald, bare, basic, biting, bitter, bleak, candid, chaste, common, commonplace, demanding, direct, dour, dry, dull, dwarfed, dwarfish, earnest, elementary, eremitic, essential, exacting, exigent, exiguous, flagellant, frank, frugal, fundamental, grave, grim, hard, harsh, homely, homespun, homogeneous, impoverished, inclement, indivisible, inornate, irreducible, jejune, keen, lean, limited, matter-of-fact, meager, mean, mendicant, mere, meticulous, miserly, monolithic, mortified, narrow, natural, neat, niggardly, of a piece, open, paltry, parsimonious, plain, plain-speaking, plain-spoken, poor, primal, primary, prosaic, prosing, prosy, puny, pure, pure and simple, puritanical, rigoristic, rough, rugged, rustic, scant, scanty, scrawny, scrimp, scrimpy, self-denying, serious, severe, sharp, simon-pure, simple, simple-speaking, single, skimp, skimpy, slender, slight, slim, small, sober, somber, spare, sparing, stark, starvation, stern, stingy, stinted, straightforward, straitened, strict, stringent, stunted, subsistence, thin, tough, unadorned, unaffected, uncluttered, undecorated, undifferenced, undifferentiated, unelaborate, unembellished, unfancy, unfussy, ungentle, uniform, unimaginative, unnourishing, unnutritious, unornamented, unornate, unpoetical, unsparing, unvarnished, watered, watery, wedded to poverty
 |
Definitions retrieved from local copies of the freely distributed DICT client/server software and databases. Click here for database copyright information. - KM |