Definition of "asperity" []

• Roughness or harshness, as of surface, sound, or climate: the asperity of northern winters. (noun)
• Severity; rigor. (noun)
• A slight projection from a surface; a point or bump. (noun)
• Harshness of manner; ill temper or irritability. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I recall the asperity with which this easy out (Kushner's "God is not all-powerful") was dismissed by Yehuda Bauer, the former head of the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, when I asked him about it in Jerusalem."
• "With all its merits, there are those who have thought that there was one thing in the declaration to be regretted; and that is, the asperity and anger with which it speaks of the person of the king; the industrious ability with which it accumulates and charges upon him all the injuries which the colonies had suffered from the mother country."
• "Professor Brack deals with the question of Hawkins's "asperity" toward Johnson in his introduction."