rough
pronunciation
How to pronounce rough in British English:
UK [rʌf]
How to pronounce rough in American English:
US [rʌf]
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- Noun:
- the part of a golf course bordering the fairway where the grass is not cut short
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- Verb:
- prepare in preliminary or sketchy form
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- Adjective:
- having or caused by an irregular surface
- (of persons or behavior) lacking refinement or finesse
- not quite exact or correct
- full of hardship or trials
- violently agitated and turbulent
- unpleasantly harsh or grating in sound
- ready and able to resort to force or violence
- of the margin of a leaf shape; having the edge cut or fringed or scalloped
- not shaped by cutting or trimming
- not carefully or expertly made
- not perfected
- unpleasantly stern
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- Adverb:
- with roughness or violence (`rough' is an informal variant for `roughly')
- with rough motion as over a rough surface
Word Origin
- rough
- rough: [OE] Rough goes back to a prehistoric West Germanic *rūkhwaz, which also produced German rauh and Dutch ruw. Despite the similarity of form and sense, ruffian is not related, and there is no evidence that ruffle is either.
- rough (n.)
- c. 1200, "broken ground," from rough (adj.). Meaning "a rowdy" is first attested 1837. Specific sense in golf is from 1901. Phrase in the rough "in an unfinished or unprocessed condition" (of timber, etc.) is from 1819.
- rough (adj.)
- Old English ruh "rough, coarse (of cloth); hairy, shaggy; untrimmed, uncultivated," from West Germanic *rukhwaz "shaggy, hairy, rough" (cognates: Middle Dutch ruuch, Dutch ruig, Old High German ruher, German rauh), from Proto-Germanic *rukhaz, from PIE *reue- (2) "to smash, knock down, tear out, dig up" (cognates: Sanskrit ruksah "rough;" Latin ruga "wrinkle," ruere "to rush, fall violently, collapse," ruina "a collapse;" Lithuanian raukas "wrinkle," rukti "to shrink"). The original -gh- sound was guttural, as in Scottish loch. Sense of "approximate" is first recorded c. 1600. Of places, "riotous, disorderly, characterized by violent action," 1863. Rough draft is from 1690s. Rough-and-ready is from 1810, originally military; rough-and-tumble (1810) is from a style of free-fighting.
- rough (v.)
- late 15c., from rough (adj.). Related: Roughed; roughing. Phrase rough it "submit to hardships" (1768) is originally nautical: To lie rough; to lie all night in one's clothes: called also roughing it. Likewise to sleep on the bare deck of a ship, when the person is commonly advised to chuse the softest plank. [Grose, "Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," 1788] To rough out "shape or plan approximately" is from 1770. To rough up "make rough" is from 1763. To rough (someone) up "beat up, jostle violently" is from 1868. The U.S. football penalty roughing was originally a term from boxing (1866).
Example
- 1. How quickly could you create a rough draft ?
- 2. That could have happened in transit due to rough handling .
- 3. The politics of this will be rough , but it was the right thing to do .
- 4. Rough terrain and local bureaucracy are obstacles to drawing capital .
- 5. The normal rough economic calculations apply : who online gets most attention vs. who gives it ?