word of the day :: austere

austere:

[aw-steer]

–adjective

1.  severe in manner or appearance; uncompromising; strict; forbidding: an austere teacher.

2. rigorously self-disciplined and severely moral; ascetic; abstinent: the austere quality of life in the convent.

3. grave; somber; solemn; serious: an austere manner.

4. without excess, luxury, or ease; simple; limited; severe: an austere life.

5. severely simple; without ornament: austere writing.

6. lacking softness; hard: an austere bed of straw.

7. rough to the taste; sour or harsh in flavor.

  

Origin:

1300-50;  ME (< AF) < L austērus  < Gk austērós  harsh, rough, bitter

"Come now, let us go and be dumb. Let us sit with our hands on our mouths, a long, austere, Pythagorean lustrum. Let us live in corners, and do chores, and suffer, and weep, and drudge, with eyes and hearts that love the Lord. Silence, seclusion, austerity, may pierce deep into the grandeur and secret of our being, and so diving, bring up out of secular darkness, the sublimities of the moral constitution."

:: Ralph Waldo Emerson ::

* Definition from www.dictionary.com