Definition of "asperity"
asperity
noun
countable and uncountable, plural asperities
The quality of being harsh or severe in the way one speaks or behaves toward people.
Quotations
But least he shoulde offend the Iewes with the asperitie of the word, if hee had said that the lawe was dead, hee vsed a digression, or deflection, saying, we are dead to the law.
1583, Christopher Rosdell (translator), A Commentarie upon the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romanes by John Calvin, London: John Harrison and George Bishop, Chapter 7
[…] Mrs. Bennet […] assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a good cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen.
1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter 13, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], page 147
The quality of being difficult or unpleasant to experience.
Quotations
[…] if the fayth were in our dayes as feruent as it hath been ere thys in tymes past, […] we should not much nede with wordes & reasonyng to extenuate and minishe the vigoure and asperitie of the paines, but the greater the more bytter that the passion were, the more ready was of old time, the feruour of faith to suffre it:
1534, Thomas More, chapter 3, in A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, London: Richard Tottel, published 1553
Whether the probability of escaping from the consequences of this ill-timed discovery was delightful to the spinster’s feelings, or whether the hearing herself described as a “lovely woman” softened the asperity of her grief, we know not.
1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 8, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, page 80
(countable) Something that is harsh and difficult to endure.
Quotations
Whence comes it, that in Christendome there has been, almost from the time of the Apostles, such justling of one another out of their places, both by forraign, and Civill war? such stumbling at every little asperity of their own fortune, and every little eminence of that of other men?
1651, Thomas Hobbes, chapter 44, in Leviathan, London: Andrew Crooke, page 334
(countable) An area that protrudes from a surface.
Quotations
[…] like so many rough pebbles shook long together in a bag, by amicable collisions, they have worn down their asperities and sharp angles, and […] become round and smooth
1768, Mr. Yorick [pseudonym; Laurence Sterne], A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, […], pages 171-172
A slip-line field analysis is given for the deformation of a soft asperity by a hard one and equations are derived for the corresponding coefficients of friction and wear rates.
1979 April, J.M. Challen, P.L.B. Oxley, “An explanation of the different regimes of friction and wear using asperity deformation models”, in Wear, volume 53, number 2, pages 229–243
(countable, geology) A section of a fault line with high friction, such that there is no movement along this part of the fault except during an earthquake.
Quotations
We inferred that the locking of asperities did cause higher stresses associated with earthquake cycle itself to occur in areas adjacent to asperities, both updip and downdip from them, and that such stressing has been much less pronounced […]
1990, Geological Survey (U.S.), National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, Summaries of Technical Reports Volume XXXI, page 333