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.
[1913 Webster]
2. Severe in modes of judging, or living, or acting; rigid;
rigorous; stern; as, an austere man, look, life.
[1913 Webster]
From whom the austere Etrurian virtue rose.
--Dryden.
[1913 Webster]
3. Unadorned; unembellished; severely simple.
[1913 Webster]
Syn: Harsh; sour; rough; rigid; stern; severe; rigorous;
strict.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
austere
adj 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]
WordNet (r) 2.0
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
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
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