Word.ws English Dictionary

roughing it

roughing it is the present participle and gerund of rough it.

Meaning of rough it

Verb

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

  1. (colloquial) To endure hard living conditions; to live without ordinary comforts.
    • Out in the backwoods with only a tent and no radio or plumbing, they were really roughing it.

Questions about roughing it

What is roughing it the present participle and gerund of?
Roughing it is the present participle and gerund of rough it.

Words near roughing it in the dictionary

  1. roughie
  2. roughies
  3. roughing
  4. roughing fluid
  5. roughing fluids
  6. roughing it
  7. roughing mill
  8. roughing mills
  9. roughing out
  10. roughing pump
  11. roughing pumps

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: roughing it (page history and authors); rough it (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: “roughing it.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/roughing_it. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.