Austere

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [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.
        [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]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  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}]

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