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Roughness   /rˈəfnəs/   Listen
Roughness

noun
1.
A texture of a surface or edge that is not smooth but is irregular and uneven.  Synonym: raggedness.
2.
The quality of being unpleasant (harsh or rough or grating) to the senses.  Synonym: harshness.
3.
An unpolished unrefined quality.  Synonym: crudeness.
4.
Used of the sea during inclement or stormy weather.  Synonyms: choppiness, rough water.
5.
Rowdy behavior.  Synonyms: disorderliness, rowdiness, rowdyism.
6.
The formation of small pits in a surface as a consequence of corrosion.  Synonyms: indentation, pitting.
7.
Harsh or severe speech or behavior.  "The roughness of her voice was a signal to keep quiet"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Roughness" Quotes from Famous Books



... should not be introduced without cause.*—A sudden and apparently unnecessary change of construction causes awkwardness and roughness at least, and sometimes breaks the flow of the sentence so seriously as to cause perplexity. Thus, write "virtuous and accomplished," or "of many virtues and accomplishments," not "of many virtues and accomplished;" ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... view of the extreme north-eastern promontory of the island, a tall cliff known as the Punta del Imperatore in honour of the great Emperor Charles the Fifth, beyond which visitors rarely penetrate owing to the roughness, or rather non-existence of roads, though the southern side of the island, which lies between this cape and the castle of Ischia, is fully as beautiful as the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... head that he was a gentleman, from those very reasons that proved he was not one; and to show himself a fine gentleman, by a behavior which seemed to insinuate he had never seen one. He was, moreover, a man of gallantry; at the age of seventy he had the finicalness of Sir Courtly Nice, with the roughness of Surly; and, while he was deaf himself, had a voice ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding

... divert his mind he hurried to the front door to welcome the visitor and drew him into the room with friendly roughness. ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... her emotion; then, bending forward, laid her lips upon the roughness of his hair. It might have been the stirring of the breeze, for all the sign ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay

... Rome he distinguished himself as a painter as well as a dramatic poet. His tragedies were not mere translations, but adaptations of Greek tragedies to the Roman stage. The fragments which are extant are full of new and original thoughts, and the very roughness of his style and audacity of his expressions have somewhat of the solemn grandeur and picturesque boldness which distinguish the father ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... ordinary sort. Their feathers grow the wrong way, standing up in a ragged and disorderly fashion; and they, too, have the effect of having been blown about and disarranged, until nature yielded, and agreed to their permanent roughness. ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... lives. There were always many apprentised boys on the ships, and these worked without other pay than clothing, food and a little pocket money until they were twenty-one years of age. In many cases they received little consideration from the skippers and sometimes were treated with unnecessary roughness ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace

... soften our hearts, my step-mother's and mine, and to draw us nearer together as only the presence of children can. A household without children is always hard and angular, even when surrounded by all the softening influences of refinement and education. What was ours with its poverty and roughness, its every-day cares and its endless discomforts? One day was like all the rest, and in their wearying succession they rise up in my memory like ghosts of the past coming to lay their cold, death-like hands on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... his list! But with what a gusto would he describe his favourite authors, Donne, or Sir Philip Sidney, and call their most crabbed passages delicious! He tried them on his palate as epicures taste olives, and his observations had a smack in them, like a roughness on the tongue. With what discrimination he hinted a defect in what he admired most—as in saying that the display of the sumptuous banquet in Paradise Regained was not in true keeping, as the simplest fare was all that was necessary to ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... he bore him to the ground, while shadowy, naked figures glided out from the blackness of the forest and bound and gagged him without a sound. Then carrying him away from the path the natives placed him, without roughness, under the shelter of an empty house, ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... and when day came hoisted a little sail; but the sea was terrible, and if he had not been so sure of the staunch little Nina he would have felt himself in danger of being lost. The next day the sea, instead of going down, increased in roughness; there was a heavy cross sea which kept breaking right over the ship, and it became necessary to make a little sail in order to run before the wind, and to prevent the vessel falling back into the trough of the seas. All ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... and Captain Walsingham were earnest to confirm. No young people could have higher ideas than they had of the duty of children towards parents, and of the delight of family confidence and union. In former times, when Mr. Beaumont had been somewhat to blame in the roughness of his sincerity towards his mother, and when he had been disposed to break from her artful restraints, Captain Walsingham, by his conversation, and by his letters, had always used his power and influence to keep him within bounds; and whenever he could ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... N. roughness &c adj.; tooth, grain, texture, ripple; asperity, rugosity^, salebrosity^, corrugation, nodosity^; arborescence^ &c 242; pilosity^. brush, hair, beard, shag, mane, whisker, moustache, imperial, tress, lock, curl, ringlet; fimbriae, pili, cilia, villi; lovelock; beaucatcher^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... servants, slaves, and the inferior kind of people to feed upon. Hereunto likewise, because it is dry and brickle in the working (for it will hardly be made up handsomely into loaves), some add a portion of rye meal in our time, whereby the rough dryness or dry roughness thereof is somewhat qualified, and then it is named miscelin, that is, bread made of mingled corn, albeit that divers do sow or mingle wheat and rye of set purpose at the mill, or before it come there, and sell the same at the ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... with intense interest at the chateau, which was unlike anything that he had ever seen before. It was a strange compound of luxury and roughness. The walls were of wood, often ill-hewn, but several pieces of beautifully-woven tapestry hung upon them. Some of the floors were entirely bare, others were covered partly by Eastern rugs. Carved and curved ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the whole of the 28th at Chaadoo, in order to give the carriers with the luggage, time to come up with them, having been unavoidably detained by the roughness and unevenness of the road from Dufo to Elokba. The Katunga eunuch already mentioned, was sent by the king of that place to receive the customary tribute of the governors of various towns on the road between Katunga and Jenna. This man was treated with much respect both by ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... as pointed out by Professor Sturgis, chiefly in the character of the spores, their unusual size and roughness.[18] ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... literature of leisure and retrospection; and already Irving's gentle elaboration, the refined and slightly artificial beauty of his style, and his persistently genial and sympathetic attitude have begun to pall upon readers who demand a more nervous and accented kind of writing. It is felt that a little roughness, a little harshness, even, would give relief to his pictures of life. There is, for instance, something a little irritating in the old-fashioned courtliness of his manner toward women; and one reads with ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... well; and with all the means and appliances of the Lady Paulina, wearied besides as she had been with the fatigue of a day's march, performed over roads almost impassable from roughness, there was little reason to think that she would miss the benefit of her natural advantages. Yet sleep failed to come, or came only by fugitive snatches, which presented her with tumultuous dreams,—sometimes of the emperor's court in Vienna, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... was a writing-material of the ancients; they used it to smoothe the roughness of the parchment, or to sharpen ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... fortune evidently and appropriately. I imagine that to be extremely rich would have appeared to him improper, outre—too blatant altogether. And obviously, too, the fortune was not of his making. The making of a fortune cannot be achieved without some roughness. It is a matter of temperament. His nature was too kindly for strife. In the course of conversation he mentioned his estate quite by the way, in reference to that painful and alarming rheumatic affection. One year, staying incautiously beyond the Alps as late as the middle ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... should be smooth, as any roughness grinds the ink too coarsely, whereas the finer it is ground or mixed the easier it will flow, the less liability to clog the instruments, and the smoother and more flat it will lie upon the paper. In mixing the ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose

... almost bruskly. Of late he had begun to develop a manner which had just a hint of roughness in it sometimes. This manner was the expression of a strong inward effort he was making. If, as his mother believed, already Rosamund was able to live with the child, Dion's solitary possession of the woman he loved was definitely over, probably forever. Something within ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... about ten miles we heard shots in the direction where I knew George was with his four assistants, and turning in that direction, we put our horses down to their best speed, and were soon at the scene of action, but owing to the roughness of the ground we could not make as good time as we desired. When in sight of the contestants I saw that George was on foot, a comrade on each side of him, and they were firing as fast as they could load and shoot. He had run into those Indians, about twenty in number, hid ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan

... sea! The strength of youth thrilled in every nerve and muscle; the vigour of health and life coursed in every vein. I felt, just then, as if exhaustion were impossible. The ice was so smooth that there was no sensation of roughness under foot to tell of a solid support. The swift gliding motion was more like the skimming of the swallow than the skating of a man. The smallest impulse sent me shooting ahead with an ease that almost ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... the roughness of Peter's exterior, he had always been a man of deep religious feelings, and through all his life was in habits of daily prayer. This loft had been his place of private devotion to which he daily ascended. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... inside forwards evidently did not relish this state of things; they had expected an easy win, and began to show their disappointment in the increased roughness of ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... yew put them air cursed dollars back again. It's jest like yew darned Britishers, ter want ter shove money inter a man's hand, jest like ez if he war a nigger, an' hadn't a red cent ter buy a slice of watermelon with," and then all his assumed roughness failed him, and his eyes grew misty as he grasped the Englishman's hand for ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke

... and memory are still cherished, and must continue to be, while from his life many lessons may be drawn to benefit and encourage others—lessons which we cannot here write out; but they teach patience, industry, and faithfulness to duty, while they also warn us to avoid the bitterness and roughness which are blemishes on the memory of this great, ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement

... praising any of his pupils, and, indeed, was regarded as a very grumpy personage, was a regular attendant at these performances, and never failed at the finish to speak a few words of praise or criticism. The old musician was secretly very proud of his pupil, and despite his habitual roughness of manner, Felix had a sincere affection for his master, as well as a deep respect for ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... he said, with a kind roughness in his voice. "Safe and sound—not a scratch! Can you sit up ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... ending it is," said Kate. "Do you realize that the family is broken up, and the children are to be half strangers to each other? Did you not notice that they seemed very fond of each other when we saw them in the summer? There was not half the roughness and apparent carelessness of one another which one so often sees in the country. Theirs was such a little world; one can understand how, when the man's wife died, he was bewildered and discouraged, utterly ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... but run with their wooden-block printed Edicts wet from the presses, and shout indiscreetly to the passers-by, "Aside, our business is important." In all faith there is something in this movement. It is also noticed that roughness and rudeness are growing in the streets; little things that are always the precursors of the coming storm in the East are freely indulged in, and "foreign devil" is now almost a chorus. The atmosphere is obviously unwholesome, but guards have been ordered and it will soon be well. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... their own interests. And if such a mischance as this may happen to any man of eminence—as has been my case, and the case of divers others I could recall—it shall not be written down in the list of his errors, unless in aftertimes he shall seek to justify the same. It is necessary to advance roughness in the place of refinement, and stubborn tenacity for steadfastness. No man can be pronounced guilty of offence on the score of some hasty word or other which may escape his lips; such a charge should rather be made ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... passed the town hall or meeting house she could hear the click of a typewriter through an open window, an incongruous touch of modernity in an otherwise immaculate antique setting. The sun was warm and came filtering through the shade to splotch the uneven brick pavement, bringing out its homely roughness in minute detail. She felt as if she recognized each upturned brick, and the worn patch of yellow earth where a grass plot was meant to be, up to the edge of the gnarled root of the oak stump that had been struck by lightning, was just as it ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... and of a light colour; the leaves small, deeply indented, and of a pale green; the cup which contains the acorn is fringed on the edges, and embraces it about one half: the acorn itself, which grows in great profusion, is of an excellent flavour, and has none of the roughness which most other acorns possess; they are now falling, and have probably attracted the number of deer which we saw on this place, as all the animals we have seen are fond of that food. The ground having been recently burnt by the Indians, is ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... "roughness" of Browning's verse is at all events never the roughness that comes from mismanagement or disregard of the form chosen. He has an unerring ear for time and quantity; and his subordination to the laws of his metre is extraordinary in its minuteness. Of ringing lines there ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... nigh, that enjoyed so much quiet. When he had tried and considered all things, he was informed that there was yet one passage left unguarded, through Perrhaebia by the temple of Apollo and the Rock. Gathering, therefore, more hope from the place being left defenseless than fear from the roughness and difficulty of the passage, he proposed it for consultation. Amongst those that were present at the council, Scipio, surnamed Nasica, son-in-law to Scipio Africanus, who afterwards was so powerful in the senate-house, was the first that offered himself to command those that ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... Betty was going: though there are so many of us, you've no idea what a gap it makes in the family when even one is away; and, with all her roughness and tormenting ways, Betty is real nice, too. I didn't actually know what I'd do with both Nannie and her away. I couldn't help wishing that the Ervengs had asked Nora instead of Betty, and I know Betty wished so, too, for you never saw a madder person than she was when she came upstairs to help ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... his governess, "and out authority says this tree is distinguished by its leaves being in threes—the white pine, you know, has them in fives—by the rigidity and sharpness of the scales of its cones, by the roughness of its bark, and by the denseness of the brushes of its stiff, crowded leaves. Its usual height is from forty to fifty feet, but it is sometimes much taller. The trunk is not only rough, but very dark in color; and from this circumstance the species is frequently called black pine. The wood is very ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... more for—for understanding me," she went on warmly. He interrupted her with a certain effect of roughness. I didn't like him speaking to this frank creature so much from under the brim of his hat, as it were. And he produced a faint, rasping voice quite like a ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... use of a thin sheet of vulcanized India-rubber, placed between the iron surfaces, not only is all this expense saved, but a joint is produced that is absolutely and permanently perfect. It is not even necessary to rub off the roughness of the casting, for the rougher the surface, the better the joint. Goodyear's invention supplies an article that Watt and Fulton sought in vain, and which would seem to put the finishing touch to the steam-engine,—if, in these days of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... his clients were luxurious and extravagant, he took a revengeful pleasure in having his shoes halfsoled a second time, and in getting the last wear out of a broken collar. He had first been interested in Thea Kronborg because of her bluntness, her country roughness, and her manifest carefulness about money. The mention of Harsanyi's name always made him pull a wry face. For the first time Thea had a friend who, in his own cool and guarded way, liked her for whatever ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... the crate was handled, not with deliberate roughness, but with such carelessness that it half-slipped out of a baggageman's hands, capsized sidewise, and was caught when it was past the man's knees but before it struck the cement floor. But, Michael, sliding helplessly down the perpendicular bottom of the crate, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... dirty and ragged as his law papers, was crammed into his knapsack with them. But that was neither here nor there in the estimation of the habitans, so long as his law smelt strong in the nostrils of their opponents in litigation. They rather prided themselves upon the roughness of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... disciplined, he said; gently at first, afterwards with roughness, even to scourging, if need were—for her soul's sake. Also her servant Emlyn must be kept away from her—for her soul's sake, since without doubt she was a dangerous witch. Also, when the time of the birth of the child came on, he would send a wise woman to wait upon her, one who was accustomed ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... Georgy. She had worked even at the Latin accidence, fondly hoping that she might be capable of instructing him in that language. To part with him all day, to send him out to the mercy of a schoolmaster's cane and his schoolfellows' roughness, was almost like weaning him over again to that weak mother, so tremulous and full of sensibility. He, for his part, rushed off to the school with the utmost happiness. He was longing for the change. That childish gladness wounded his mother, who was herself ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... conversation, and regretted that I was drawn away from it by an engagement at another place. I had, for a part of the evening, been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an observation now and then, which he received very civilly; so that I was satisfied that though there was a roughness in his manner, there was no ill-nature in his disposition. Davies followed me to the door, and when I complained to him a little of the hard blows which the great man had given me, he kindly took upon him to console me by saying, 'Don't be ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... home like a wounded man made to feel proud by victory, but with no one to stop the bleeding of his wounds: and the more my pride rose, the more I suffered pain. There at home sat my grandfather, dejected, telling me that the loss of me a second time would kill him, begging me to overlook his roughness, calling me his little Harry and his heir, his brave-spirited boy; yet I was too sure that a word of my father to him would have brought him very near another ejaculation ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... is tall and broad-shouldered, and as agile as a boy. There is a certain hard, compact firmness about him as if he had been cast in bronze. His alert eyes are either flashing in authority or beaming in gentleness. The same play between dominant roughness and tenderness is true, too, of ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... all its proverbial roughness: the whole sea was dells and knolls. It was terrible to see the pilot jump aboard while his boat was alternately tossed above our deck; he was caught by the sailors in their arms.... The custom-house officers have detained the ship so long that we are left here by the tide.... ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... that she was in the Pullman on her way to New York, going back to her life and her work. When she aroused from her stupor it was only to ask the porter to waken her half an hour out of Jersey City, or to remonstrate with him about the delays and the roughness of the road. At midnight Everett and the nurse were left alone with her. Poor Charley Gaylord had lain down on a couch outside the door. Everett sat looking at the sputtering night lamp until it made ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... of those hearty men, with superabundant animal spirits—to say nothing of physique—who are not easily persuaded to let others follow their own inclinations, and who are so good-natured that it is difficult to feel offended with their kindly roughness. He introduced himself by the name of George Dally, and insisted on Black accompanying him to his tent. Sandy being a sociable, although a quiet man, offered little resistance, and Jerry, being a worshipper of ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... to the ship, the Sunday dinner in the cabin, the presents of delicacies that followed, even from the gruff mate, made me feel that under all this roughness lay a tender humanity. Away out here, three thousand miles from home, the same sort of people lived as those ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... Cowed by the roughness of my tone, she rose and went. I heard her light, hesitating step pass through the hall, and so ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... of roughness natural to those red wines in which the skins and a portion of the stems have been subjected to the process of fermentation, is readily communicated by astringent substances, and by none more easily or purely than by catechu and kino, substances free from injurious flavour; the sloe is also ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various

... question with the utmost exactness; and this, I take it, is what gives mathematical knowledge a greater certainty than any other. But in things whose excess is not judged by greater or smaller, as smoothness and roughness, hardness and softness, darkness and light, the shades of colors, all these are very easily distinguished when the difference is any way considerable, but not when it is minute, for want of some common measures, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... cordiality in which sentiments and ideas had no part. His manners were engaging, and his conversation pretty well formed by the world; but to send such a man to negotiate * with the revolutionary strength and roughness that surrounded Bonaparte, was a most pitiable spectacle. An aide-de-camp of Bonaparte complained of the familiarity of M. de C.; he was displeased that one of the first noblemen of the Austrian monarchy should squeeze his hand without ceremony. ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein

... Through the superficial crust of ignorance and wildness you may see in every mountaineer a frank and acute intellect, and, brigand though he may be, he still shows evidences of human feeling and of a soul. His brigandage, indeed, is only the external roughness which results naturally from his education, his circumstances and his mode of life. Beneath it there are intellect, feeling, manliness and strength of character. Under certain conditions of course these ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... breathings of the others that they were all in deep slumber. For there were sounds which came from Eden's bed which disturbed his heart with pity. His feelings bled for the poor little fellow, so young and fresh from home, a newcomer like himself, but evidently so little accustomed to this roughness and so little able to protect his own interests. For a long time into the night he heard the poor child crying and sobbing to himself, though he was clearly trying to stifle the sound. At last Walter could stand it no longer, and feeling ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... measured her wrist, feeling her pulse beat madly. She really had a very little hand, though to his sensitive vision the roughness of the skin seemed to swell it to a size demanding a boxing glove. He bought her six pairs of tan kid, in a beautiful cardboard box. He could ill afford the gift, and made one of his whimsical grimaces when ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... bands, jolting cruelly against the axle. Susannah cried out that she should be thrown from her seat. The swift-falling darkness encompassed their path. Their hope lay in the straightness of the road, and their chief fear was that by some greater roughness of the way the chaise, which was now swaying ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... between beautiful green shores. There is a place in the river, near the mouth, which has somewhat the appearance of rapids, when the tide is coming in. This, the people say, is the site of a sunken city, whose towers and turrets make the roughness of the water. The whole city can be seen every seven years, but, as the sight is said to be unlucky, every body avoids it. The whole story is about as probable as the one I have told you of the damp and dubious ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... seized the nun with honest roughness, and hurried her away. As soon as she was gone, the children ran different ways, each to collect some favourite thing, which they thought they could not leave behind. Victoire alone stood motionless ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth

... by a little observation pick out the eighteenth-century stones by their shape, which is as a rule much more ornamented and curvilinear than those of later date. They may also be detected very often by the roughness of their backs as well as by their weather-beaten complexions, and with a little experience and practice the student may guess correctly within a few years the age of any particular one seen even ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... sensations gave place to despondency before the evening had elapsed. They were terrified at the idea of a voyage through an icy sea in bark canoes. They speculated on the length of the journey, the roughness of the waves, the uncertainty of provisions, the exposure to cold where we could expect no fuel, and the prospect of having to traverse the barren grounds to get to some establishment. The two interpreters expressed their apprehensions ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin

... The roughness of the surface was not without its effect on the sledge-meter, which had to be repaired temporarily. It was a matter of some inconvenience that after this date its records were erroneous and approximate distances were only obtained ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... more than usual. The wind too, blew strongly from the north-west, and the vessel had to contend with the tide, which began to flow soon after she passed the rock. When the steamer arrived off the Floating-light, which is stationed about fifteen miles from Liverpool, the roughness of the sea alarmed many of the passengers.—One of the survivors stated, that Mr. Tarry, of Bury, who, with his family, consisting of himself, his wife, their five children, and servant, was on board, being, in common with others, greatly alarmed for his ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... of its former use as a cordial or heart-fortifying medicine. Courage is from the same source. The Standard Dictionary, however, points to burrago, rough, and relates it indirectly by cross references to birrus, a thick, coarse woolen cloth worn by the poor during the thirteenth century. The roughness of the full-grown leaves suggests flannel. Whichever derivation be correct, each is interesting as implying qualities, intrinsic or ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... anything. As we say, trust is reliance. As a weak man might stay his faltering, tottering steps upon some strong staff, or might lean upon the outstretched arm of a friend, so we, conscious of our weakness, aware of our faltering feet, and realising the roughness of the road, and the smallness of our strength, may lay the whole weight of ourselves upon the loving ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... life, and who, in religious matters, were held in control by a priesthood, against whom they could not rebel without endangering that hope of heaven which had induced them to journey across the ocean. There are roughness and lawlessness in all frontier settlements, but this Mormon community differed from all other gatherings of new population in the American West. It did not migrate of its own accord, attracted by a fertile soil or precious ores; it was induced to migrate, not without misrepresentation ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... summons of their lord! But thine is precious; the fore-appointed Blood of kings, of God's anointed! Moreover, what has the world in store For one like her, but tears and toil? Daughter of sorrow, serf of the soil, A peasant's child and a peasant's wife, And her soul within her sick and sore With the roughness and barrenness of life! I marvel not at the heart's recoil From a fate like this, in one so tender, Nor at its eagerness to surrender All the wretchedness, want, and woe That await it in this world below, For the unutterable splendor Of the world of rest beyond the skies. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... at least do not go out of their character, and generally behind the roughness there is a certain latent good humor, so that in difficulties it is possible to get ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... foremost and French. Matthew Arnold's essay on criticism fostered this anxiety, and yet I find in this work of his a lack of easy French knowledge, such as his misunderstanding of the word brutalite, which means no more, or little more, than roughness. Matthew Arnold, by the way, knew so little of the French character as to be altogether ignorant of French provincialism, French practical sense, and French "convenience." "Convenience" is his dearest word of contempt, ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... that soft, sweet haze, which like the eider down of charity smooths all roughness, rounds all angles, the world of shore and lake presented a magical panorama of towns and villages, herds of cattle, flocks of sheep, spires of churches, masts of vessels,—all flashing past the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... which struck me between what I found here and what I had left elsewhere. But just as the eye accustoms itself, little by little, to the feeble glimmer of a vault, in the same way my body has accustomed itself to the roughness of my new existence, and my heart to all its ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... countenance was as calm as that of a reposing infant. I think it was simplicity, rather than mischief, with perhaps a youthful playfulness, that led him to this outbreak. I have often noticed that even quiet horses, on a sharp November morning, when their coats are beginning to get the winter roughness, will give little sportive demi-kicks, with slight sudden elevation of the subsequent region of the body, and a sharp short whinny,—by no means intending to put their heels through the dasher, or to address the driver rudely, but feeling, to use a familiar word, frisky. This, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... yards, when he stopped again. "Look here," he said, with a sort of appealing roughness, "you're quite straight ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... surfaces formed of a succession of projections and depressions. When two bodies are in contact, these projections and indentations fit into one another, and the adherence that results is proportional to the degree of roughness of the surfaces. If, by a more or less energetic mechanical action, we move one of the bodies with respect to the other, we shall produce, according as the action overcomes cohesion, more or less disintegration of the bodies. The resulting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various

... if the "foreigner" takes all this churlishness good-humouredly, or as a matter of course, and makes good any claim upon their latent kindliness and hospitality, they are faithful and generous, and thoroughly to be relied upon. As a slight illustration of the roughness that pervades all classes in these out-of- the-way villages, I may relate a little adventure which happened to my husband and myself, three years ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... compound of boisterous roughness and refinement in expression, and these odd contrasts surprised strangers such as Moore and Ticknor. The former was shocked, and the latter said his conversation was a perpetual contradiction to the exquisite delicacy ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... February to take the field with an army amounting, it is said, to thirty or forty thousand men, provided with a powerful artillery and accompanied by an immense baggage-train, wherein Charles delighted to display his riches and magnificence in contrast with the simplicity and roughness of his personal habits. At the rumor of such an armament the Swiss attempted to keep off the war from their country. "I have heard tell," says Commynes, "by a knight of theirs, who had been sent by them to the said duke, that he told him that against them ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... that we have we purchase. By him are we like to have a better increase Than ever we had by the laws of Moses. For Moses' hard law we had not else but darkness, Figure and shadow, all was not else but night, Punishment for sin, much rigour, pain, and roughness, An high charge is there, where all is turned to light, Grace and remission anon will shine full bright. Never man lived that ever saw God afore, Which now in our kind man's ruin will restore. Help me to give thanks to that Lord evermore, Which am unto Christ a crier in the desert, To ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... will cut his heart out, I t'ink-bagosh!" said Nicolle Terasse, and took a drink of white-whiskey. For a long time Tim stood looking at the other, until no sound came from the woods, whither the Pioneers had gone. Then at last, slowly, and with no roughness, as the terror- stricken impostor shrank and withered, he cut ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... publish."—An excursion aboard a steamboat to Thompson's Island, to visit the Manual Labor School for boys. Aboard the steamboat several poets and various other authors; a Commodore,—Colton, a small, dark brown, sickly man, with a good deal of roughness in his address; Mr. Waterston, talking poetry and philosophy. Examination and exhibition of the boys, little tanned agriculturists. After examination, a stroll round the island, examining the products, as wheat in sheaves on the stubble-field; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... companion to choose whether he will be with him or against him. It is a pity, perhaps, to have represented him as having begun life as a blacksmith, for one grudges him the advantage of so logical a reason for his roughness and hardness. ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... Theo followed her closely, in light attire also, and with a face all alight with happiness, more bright than in all his life his face had ever been before. He took Geoff by the shoulders with a sort of tender roughness, which was almost like an embrace. "Is that you, my old boy?" he said, with an unsteady laugh, pushing him into his mother's arms. And then there was some crying and kissing, and Geoff heard it said that they had thought it better so, to avoid all fuss and ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... parts still placid and slow. There appeared also that which I take to be an infallible accompaniment of secluded glens and of the head waters of rivers (however canalized or even overbuilt they are), I mean a certain roughness all about them and the stout protest of the hill-men: their stone cottages and their lonely ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... miles to row in about twenty minutes; but we hoped the mail-boat might not be punctual. For a time we watched her anxiously; there was no motion; we came nearer, but the flags were not yet hauled in. The men put forth all their strength, animated by the exhortations of the officer at the helm. The roughness of the sea rendered their efforts to some extent nugatory: still we were rapidly approaching the steamer. At length she moved, punctual almost to the minute, at first slowly, but soon ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... being ended, he went into the tent to take a look at Job, the which he had done already in the early morning; for the condition of the lad preyed somewhat upon him; he being, for all his size and top-roughness, a man of surprisingly tender heart. Yet the boy remained much as on the previous evening, so that we knew not what to do with him to bring him into better health. One thing we tried, knowing that no food had passed his lips since the previous morning, and ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson

... land." As, by his error with regard to the breadth of the earth, Ptolemy led to Columbus; so, by his mistaken notions as to the "great south land," he prepared the way for the discoveries of Captain Cook. But notwithstanding these errors, which were due partly to the roughness of the materials which he had to deal with, and partly to scientific caution, Ptolemy's work is one of the great monuments of human industry and knowledge. For the Old World it remained the basis of all geographical knowledge up to the beginning ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... beat her with his words, and, wonderful to say, Ayesha, this being more than woman, submitted to the chastisement meekly. Yet had any other man dared to address her with roughness even, I doubt not that his speech and his life would have come to a swift and simultaneous end, for I knew that now, as of old, she could slay by the mere effort of her will. But she did not slay; she did not even threaten, only, as any ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... the smoke from the abandoned gold mill. McGinnis ran it by himself and undisturbed until his woodpile waned. Then he disconnected, blew off, and set to work to scrape his plates, whereon to his experienced eye there now appeared a gratifying roughness in the coating. He got off a lump of amalgam as big as his fist, and was content. "It's ojus there's no retort here," said he, "but like enough I'll find some way to ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... names. The value of the habitual courtesies of the regular army is exceedingly apparent with these men: an officer of polished manners can wind them round his finger, while white soldiers seem rather to prefer a certain roughness. The demeanor of my men to each other is very courteous, and yet I see none of that sort of upstart conceit which is sometimes offensive among free negroes at the North, the dandy-barber strut. This is an agreeable surprise, for ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... obscure points which he could divine in the tragedy, he was asking Pierre for particulars, when his son Luigi suddenly entered the room, breathless from having climbed the stairs so quickly and with his face full of anxious fear. He had just dismissed his contractors with impatient roughness, giving no thought to his serious financial position, the jeopardy in which his fortune was now placed, so anxious was he to be up above beside his father. And when he was there his first uneasy glance was for the old man, to ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... any signs of external or internal division, still the laminae obtained by chiselling this lower surface carefully, broke up regularly into the shapes to be expected in sections of prisms cut at right angles to the axis. The roughness of my instruments made it impossible to discover how far this extended, and whether it ceased to be the case at any given ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... thrilled when he took the belt roughly from her, thrilled to the roughness. She looked at him softly, and was aware of a pain at the breast and of ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... repeated the expression of his desire. Marshal Cosse was sent to meet him, and the honors due to the king himself were everywhere paid to him on the road. A singular mixture of military and barbaric roughness with the natural grandeur of a conqueror and creator of an empire, the czar mightily excited the curiosity of the Parisians. "Sometimes, feeling bored by the confluence of spectators," says Duclos, "but never disconcerted, he would dismiss them with a word, a gesture, or would ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... have a pile. I tell you, if you keep on, you sho gwine have a bale cause dere a lot of slavery people is spring up till now. I ought to could fetch back more to speak to you bout, but just like I been tell you, I wasn' never cared for by a mother en I is caught on to a heap of roughness just on account dat I ain' never had a mother to have ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... eyes, as those which sting Against the smarting pupil and draw tears, Or show, with gruesome aspect, grim and vile. For never a shape which charms our sense was made Without some elemental smoothness; whilst Whate'er is harsh and irksome has been framed Still with some roughness in its elements. Some, too, there are which justly are supposed To be nor smooth nor altogether hooked, With bended barbs, but slightly angled-out, To tickle rather than to wound the sense— And of which sort is the salt tartar of ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... and owned by Mrs. Dollery, was rather a movable attachment of the roadway than an extraneous object, to those who knew it well. The old horse, whose hair was of the roughness and color of heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and hoofs were distorted by harness and drudgery from colthood—though if all had their rights, he ought, symmetrical in outline, to have been picking the herbage ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... tools, and operations, of which no mention is found in books; what favourable accident or easy inquiry brought within my reach, has not been neglected; but it had been a hopeless labour to glean up words, by courting living information, and contesting with the sullenness of one, and the roughness of another. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... of the smith to-day was particularly disagreeable, but his services were at all times indispensable. As the tide did not leave the site of the forge, he stood in the water, and as there was some roughness on the surface it was with considerable difficulty that, with the assistance of the sailors, he was enabled to preserve alive his fire; and, while his feet were immersed in water, his face was not only scorched but continually exposed to volumes ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... along the ragged terrain. His suit's grippers and rollers automatically adjusted to the roughness of the topography. He concentrated his attention on the infrared detector that hung before ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... could soon be felt over the boat's hull. I heard its plating grind against the limestone roughness of that ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... Sinodal, encamping for the night with his suite; the roughness of the way has delayed his coming to Tamara. Near the camp is a chapel, erected in memory of one of his ancestors, who was slain there by a ruffian and the Prince's old servant admonishes him to ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... but he knew he would ask no kiss when alone with her, so deeply did the lover respect the innocence, the frankness of the young girl, whose excessive sensibility, often tried, taught him that a harsh word, a cold look, or the alternations of gentleness and roughness might kill her. The only freedom between the two took place before the eyes of the old man in ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... are always being perverted by the attempt to imitate the finish of nature. There is a vanity of craftsmanship in Louis Quinze furniture, in the later Chinese porcelain, in modern jewelry, no less than in Dutch painting, which is the death of art. All great works of art show an effort, a roughness, an inadequacy of craftsmanship, which is the essence of their beauty and distinguishes it from the beauty of nature. As soon as men cease to understand this and despise this effort and roughness and inadequacy, they demand from ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock

... landsman these tarpaulins, as they were called, seemed a strange and half savage race. All their knowledge was professional; and their professional knowledge was practical rather than scientific. Off their own element they were as simple as children. Their deportment was uncouth. There was roughness in their very good nature; and their talk, where it was not made up of nautical phrases, was too commonly made up of oaths and curses. Such were the chiefs in whose rude school were formed those sturdy warriors from whom Smollett, in the next age, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... was within five-and-twenty yards or so, hoping that the roughness of the ground would cause him to stumble and the shield to shift so that I could get a chance at him behind it. But I did not, so at last, again praying to St. Hubert, I drew the big bow till the string touched my ear, and let ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... said: "Lola, what is it you don't understand about me?" "Cause is often roughness!" She remarked—and here I really felt that there was little that I must needs explain—for I am not conscious of meriting ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann

... 1916, the Italians succeeded in carrying very strong Austrian positions south of Corno del Coston and east of the Borcola Pass, notwithstanding the strong resistance of the Austrians and the difficulty presented by the roughness of the ground. During the night the Austrians launched several violent but unsuccessful counterattacks ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... with it a deep reverence for her innate and virginal purity. It touched me deeply to note with what painful care she set herself to correct the grammatical errors and roughness of her speech; often she would fall to a sighful despondency because of her ignorance and at such times it was, I think, that I loved her best, vowing I would not change her for any proud lady that was or ever had ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... fellow Who, having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb Quite from his nature: he cannot flatter, he,— An honest mind and plain,—he must speak truth! An they will take it, so; if not, he's plain. These kind of knaves I know which in this plainness Harbour more craft and more corrupter ends Than twenty silly-ducking observants ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... Bartlett was its first victim. In the white twilight she forgot the social gap that lay between her and the youth beside her. She ceased to observe the size and roughness of his hands, but noted instead the fine breadth of his shoulders. She concerned herself no longer with his verbal lapses, but responded instead to his glowing confidence that everybody was as sincere and well intentioned as himself. ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... it seemed willing to make no more commotion that day. The sun was far on his way to the horizon, and many a broad hill-side slope was in shadow; the snow had blown or melted from off the stones and rocks leaving all their roughness and bareness unveiled; and the white crust of snow that lay between them looked a cheerless waste in the shade of the wood and the hill. But there were other spots where the sunbeams struck and bright streams of light ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... officers, none of whom have been trained in a school of gentleness, it is surprising that severer treatment is not generally met with on the part of those who run afoul of the criminal law. The ordinary "cop" tries to do his duty as effectively as he can. With the average citizen gruffness and roughness go a long way in the assertion of authority. In the task of policing a big city, the rights of the individual must indubitably suffer to a certain extent if the rights of the multitude are to be properly protected. We can make too much of small injustices and petty incivilities. Police ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... hotel routine. Somewhere behind them, in the background of their lives, there was doubtless a real past, peopled by real human activities: they themselves were probably the product of strong ambitions, persistent energies, diversified contacts with the wholesome roughness of life; yet they had no more real existence than the poet's shades ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... every time he opened it. This lady said that the touching way, the graceful expression of Mr. Williamson's manner, when he said this, took her completely by surprise, having been only accustomed to his roughness and ruggedness. He added, "The Bible tells me what a rascal I am." Mr. Stephenson, the great engineer, inspected the excavations, and it was with pride Mr. Williamson repeated Mr. Stephenson's expressions ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... unimpassioned Arthur Elwood, with a seeming business-like roughness and want of feeling, assume to hide the emotions which he really felt in the discovery of his brother's ruin, and in witnessing the distress he had just caused in communicating it, hurry through the ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... early an acquisition that we cannot remember having acquired it. In running fast over average ground we find it very difficult to become conscious of each individual step, and should possibly find it more difficult still, if the inequalities and roughness of uncultured land had not perhaps caused the development of a power to create a second consciousness of our steps without hindrance to our running or walking. Pursuit and flight, whether in the chase or in war, must for many generations have ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... to the proverb, more distinctly proved to be true by the extreme roughness of its course, then must the truth of the love of Angut and Nunaga be held as proved beyond all question, for its course was a very ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... see you, Mr. Ware," she said in soft, languid tones, yet with a kind of rough burr; "my daughter has often talked of you." Her English was very good, and there was little trace of a foreign accent. Yet the occasional lisp and the frequent roughness added a piquancy to her tones. Even at her age—and she was considerably over fifty—she was undeniably a fascinating woman: in her youth she must have been a goddess both for looks and charm. Olga was regal and charming, but her mother ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume

... would. I'll teach you this winter," promised the good- natured Flora; "let me see your hands. You know a lace-maker's hands must be as smooth as silk, because any roughness ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis

... lead me back to warmth. He is himself out there in the cold, accepting it, all the time, with the same quiet fortitude that a Polar bear might. But he will thole through, in the end. For with all his roughness he can be unexpectedly adroit. Whinstane Sandy once told me something he had learned about Polar bears in his old Yukon days: with all their heaviness, they can go where a dog daren't venture. If need be, they can flatten out and ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... more heat to make water boil in a glass vessel than it does in a metal one. A metal vessel's inner surface is made up of very small points and dents. Scratching the inside of the glass so as to give it a roughness something like what the metal has, makes the boiling point lower; and a few iron filings thrown into water boiling in glass at two hundred and fourteen degrees, will bring it down to two hundred and twelve. The filings, and the roughness of the glass, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... than a studied complaisance approaching to servility; who may think it better to be robbed openly than cheated civilly, will be apt to give the preference to the Tartar character. Yet those Tartars of distinction, who fill some of the higher situations in the state, soon lose their native roughness and are scarcely distinguishable in their manners and demeanour ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... into horrible grimaces; and he was further subject to paroxysms of rage, during which it was almost certain death to approach him." Even in his saner moods, as Waliszewski tells us, he "joined to the roughness of a Russian barin all the coarseness of a Dutch sailor." Such in brief suggestion was Peter I. of Russia, half-savage, half-sovereign, the strangest jumble of contradictions who has ever worn the Imperial purple—"a huge mastodon, whose moral perceptions were ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... some risk to our own lives, as the enemy were firing at us all the time from a fort situated a short distance from the river. The man was not at all willing at first to walk, so we dragged him by the leg along the ground for some way; but owing to the roughness of the road, he soon found that he preferred walking. We searched him and found a doubloon and a half on his person, which Towser and I divided equally between us. The colonel reprimanded me for running such a risk for one prisoner, but he ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence

... their effect. The proud and angry spirits which then roamed about Paris unemployed begins to recover its old channels, though worn deeper by recent torrents. The natural urbanity of the French begins to find its way, like oil, to the surface, though there still remains a degree of roughness and bluntness of manner, partly real, and partly affected, by such as imagine it to indicate force and frankness. The events of the last thirty years have rendered the French a more reflecting people. They ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... open her heart elsewhere. Her mistress had a certain masculine roughness of demeanor which repelled expansiveness. She had an abrupt, exclamatory way of speaking that forced back all that Germinie would have liked to confide to her. It was in her nature to be brutal in her treatment of all lamentations that were not ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... it may seem that the scenes in this book are overdrawn. Such, however, is not the fact. There was much of roughness in those days, and the author has continually found it necessary to tone down rather than to exaggerate in penning these scenes from ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill

... 'em sound A princely welcome. [Exit Marall.) Roughness awhile leave me; For fawning now, a stranger to my nature, Must make way ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various



Words linked to "Roughness" :   pitting, disorder, nubbiness, thorniness, rough, smoothness, burl, corroding, prickliness, indentation, inelegance, unpleasantness, coarseness, corrosion, bumpiness, huskiness, bristliness, shagginess, knot, graininess, spininess, erosion, abrasiveness, texture, crudeness, tweediness, gruffness, hoarseness, slub, rowdiness, rough water, harshness, scratchiness, intensification, raggedness, storminess, disorderliness, scaliness, granularity



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