Word.ws English Dictionary

rough

/ɹʌf/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/ɹɐf/

rough adjective: not smooth; uneven.

Adjective

rough (comparative rougher, superlative roughest)

  1. Not smooth; uneven.
    • rough hands
    • rough stone
    Synonyms:
    abrasive, coarse, rugose
    Antonyms:
    smooth
  2. Approximate; hasty or careless; not finished.
    • a rough copy
    • a rough estimate
  3. Turbulent.
    • rough sea
    • rough water
  4. Difficult; trying.
    • Being a teenager nowadays can be rough.
  5. Crude; unrefined.
    • His manners are a bit rough, but he means well.
  6. Worn; shabby; weather-beaten.
    • "You find us a bit rough," apologized the young man, with something of contempt towards his surroundings. "We weren't expecting visitors."1914, Ernest Bramah, Max Carrados
  7. Having socio-economic problems, hence possibly dangerous.
    • the rough bit of town
    Synonyms:
    bad, poor
  8. Violent; not careful or subtle.
    • rough words
    • This box has been through some rough handling.
  9. Loud and hoarse; offensive to the ear; harsh; grating.
    • a rough tone
    • a rough voice
  10. Not polished; uncut.
    • a rough diamond
    Synonyms:
    unpolished
  11. Harsh-tasting.
    • rough wine
    • the wine, rough as it is, more wholesome than the half-melted ices, flavored with unholy essences.1880, The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, volume 40, page 833
  12. (Ireland, UK, colloquial, slang) Somewhat ill; sick; in poor condition.
  13. (Ireland, UK, colloquial, slang) Unwell due to alcohol; hungover.
  14. Of or relating to the rough breathing in the Greek language.

Noun

rough (plural roughs)

  1. The unmowed part of a golf course.
  2. A rude fellow; a coarse bully; a rowdy.
    • In Wellington Street my brother met a couple of sturdy roughs, who had just rushed out of Fleet Street with still wet newspapers and staring placards. "Dreadful catastrophe!" they bawled one to the other down Wellington Street. "Fighting at Weybridge!"1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 124
  3. A scuffed and roughened area of the pitch, where the bowler's feet fall, used as a target by spin bowlers because of its unpredictable bounce.
  4. The raw material from which faceted or cabochon gems are created.
  5. A quick sketch, similar to a thumbnail but larger and more detailed, used for artistic brainstorming.
  6. (obsolete) Boisterous weather.
    • In calms you fish; in roughs use songs and dances.1633, Phineas Fletcher, Eclog 1. Amyntas
  7. A piece inserted in a horseshoe to keep the animal from slipping.

Verb

rough (third-person singular simple present roughs, present participle roughing, simple past and past participle roughed)

  1. To create in an approximate form.
    • Rough in the shape first, then polish the details.
    • On the floor, one beside the other, stood two amphoræ of veined marble-like limestone; one a huge vase 2 feet high and more than 6 feet round, finished and perfect, with two splendid spiral bands; and the other a smaller vase, of the same type, but only just roughed out of the block.1907, Ronald M. Burrows, The Discoveries In Crete, page 90
  2. (intransitive) To break the rules by being excessively violent.
    • […] roughing is not a part of the sport, and will not be tolerated. Referees will not permit unfair practices that may cause injury to a contestant, and are held strictly responsible for enforcing these rules.1938, California. State Athletic Commission, Rules, Regulations and Law Regulating Boxing and Wrestling (page 42)
  3. To commit the offense of roughing, i.e. to punch another player.
  4. To render rough; to roughen.
  5. To break in (a horse, etc.), especially for military purposes.
    • To Rough Horses, a word in familiar use among the dragoons to signify the act of breaking in horses, so as to adapt them to military purposes.1802, Charles James, A New and Enlarged Military Dictionary
  6. To endure primitive conditions.
    • to rough it
    • “[…]Oh, but my husband is never so happy as when he is travelling. He likes roughing it. . . . My husband. . . . My husband. . . .”1920, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “The Escape”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, →OCLC, page 280
  7. (transitive) To roughen a horse's shoes to keep the animal from slipping.

Adverb

rough (comparative more rough, superlative most rough)

  1. In a rough manner; rudely; roughly.
    • I will warrant they prove such roaring boys as I knew when I served under Lumford and Goring, [...] —sleeping rough on the trenches, and dying stubbornly in their boats. Ah! those merry days are gone.1826, [Walter Scott], chapter IV, in Woodstock; Or, The Cavalier. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and...

Proper noun capitalized: Rough

Rough (plural Roughs)

  1. A surname.

rough meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

rough in Hindi

crude, unrefined
अनगढ़ angaṛh

rough in Tamil

சுமாராக

rough in Marathi

not smooth
खरबरीत kharabrīt

rough in Urdu

rough
پرش paruś, کچا kaccā, کٹھور kaṭhōr
rough, approximate
خام xām
More languagesFewer languages
rough in Bengali
তীব্র tibro
rough in Telugu
గరుకు garuku, సుమారు sumāru, కష్టమైన kaṣṭamaina
rough in Malayalam
പരുഷ paruṣa, പരുക്കൻ parukkaṉ, പരുപരുത്ത paruparutta
rough in Kannada
ಪುಂಡ, ಗೂಂಡಾ, ಕಳೆಕೀಳದ ಒರಟುನೆಲ, ಹಳ್ಳತಿಟ್ಟಿನ ನೆಲ
rough in Punjabi
ਡਗ ḍag, ਕੱਚਾ kaccā
rough in Gujarati
કાચું kācũ
rough in Odia
ରୁକ୍ଷ
rough in Sanskrit
रूक्ष rūkṣá, तृष्ट tṛṣṭá, दारुण
rough in Sinhala
රළු raḷu
rough in Assamese
খহটা khohota
rough in Nepali
अप्ठ्यारो apṭhyāro
rough in Pashto
ځیږ ziǵ
rough in Arabic
خَشِن ḵašin
rough in Indonesian
kasar
rough in Persian
زبر zebr, زمخت zomoxt, خشن xašen
rough in Myanmar
ကြမ်း kram:

Examples of rough in a sentence

  • a rough sketch of a building
  • Rough with crinkled limpet shells and sparsely strewn with locks of dry seaweed, a small boy has to stretch his legs far apart, and indeed to feel rather heroic, before he gets to the top.1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC...
  • But on arrival there, friends told my brother that the Indian Ocean was rough in June and July, and as this was my first voyage, I should not be allowed to sail until November.1927, M[ohandas] K[aramchand] Gandhi, chapter XII, in Mahadev Desai, transl., The Story of My Experiments with Truth: Translated from the...
  • But most by Numbers judge a Poet's song, / And smooth or rough, with them1711 May, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Criticism, London: […] W[illiam] Lewis […]; and sold by W[illiam] Taylor […], T[homas] Osborn[e]...
  • I was able to help Trudy set up camp and everything else, of course there are different ways to camp the usual comfortable way or roughed we of course roughed it and I did my best to keep warm.2013, Anne-Marie K. Kittiphanh, If Life Gave Me LEMONS, I Would Turn It into HONEY, →ISBN:

All 40 example sentences with rough

Synonyms of rough

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of rough

Forms of rough

Adjective
comparativerougher
superlativeroughest
alternative pronunciation-spellingruff
Noun
pluralroughs
Verb
third-person singular presentroughs
present participleroughing
past participleroughed
pastroughed
Adverb
comparativemore rough
superlativemost rough
Proper noun
pluralRoughs

Past tense of rough: roughed

Origin of rough

From Middle English rough, roughe, roȝe, row, rou, ru, ruȝ, ruh, from Old English rūg, rūh, from Proto-Germanic *rūhaz. Cognate with Scots ruch, rouch (“rough”), Saterland Frisian ruuch, rouch (“rough”), West Frisian rûch (“rough”), Low German ruuch (“rough”), Dutch ruig (“rough”), German rau(h) (“rough”), Danish ru (“uneven on the surface, "rough", "rugged"”).

English and Scottish surname, variant of Ruff, itself of several origins: * From the adjective rough * Variant of Roof, Roff, Rolfe * Scots pronunciation of Rock * German variant of Ruf, itself shortened from Rudolf.

Words formed from rough

Phrases with rough

74 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with rough

27 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about rough

What does rough mean?
Rough means not smooth; uneven.
What is rough in Hindi?
Rough in Hindi is अनगढ़ (angaṛh). See Rough meaning in Hindi.
How do you use rough in a sentence?
a rough sketch of a building
What part of speech is rough?
Rough can be an adjective, a noun, a verb or an adverb.
How do you pronounce rough?
Rough is pronounced /ɹʌf/ (UK).

Words near rough in the dictionary

  1. rougelike
  2. rouges
  3. rouget
  4. Rouget's rail
  5. Rouget's rails
  6. rough
  7. rough and ready
  8. rough and tumble
  9. rough and tumbled
  10. rough and tumbles
  11. rough and tumbling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rough (page history and authors); Rough (page history and authors); rough (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); خام (Urdu) (page history and authors); তীব্র (Bengali) (page history and authors); പരുക്കൻ (Malayalam) (page history and authors); rough (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਕੱਚਾ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); કાચું (Gujarati) (page history and authors); rough (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); तृष्ट (Sanskrit) (page history and authors); රළු (Sinhala) (page history and authors); अप्ठ्यारो (Nepali) (page history and authors); ځیږ (Pashto) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “rough.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rough. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.