Associations to the word «Severity»

Wiktionary

SEVERITY, noun. The state of being severe.
SEVERITY, noun. The degree of something undesirable; badness or seriousness.

Dictionary definition

SEVERITY, noun. Used of the degree of something undesirable e.g. pain or weather.
SEVERITY, noun. Something hard to endure; "the asperity of northern winters".
SEVERITY, noun. Extreme plainness.
SEVERITY, noun. Excessive sternness; "severity of character"; "the harshness of his punishment was inhuman"; "the rigors of boot camp".

Wise words

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
Nathaniel Hawthorne