Word.ws English Dictionary

roughness

Syllables: rough·nessUK/ˈɹʌf.nəs/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/ˈɹɐf.nəs/

roughness noun: the property of being rough, coarseness.

Noun

roughness (countable and uncountable, plural roughnesses)

  1. The property of being rough, coarseness.
    • The roughness of the road made me wonder if my car would fall apart.
  2. Something that is rough; a rough spot.
    • A variety of suitable methods for surface inspection are available to detect topographical defects induced by surface roughnesses such as scratches, digs, inclusions and spatters.2003, Klaus Bange, “Surfaces of Substrate Glasses”, in Thin Films on Glass, Springer Science & Business Media, page 101
  3. (US) Roughage; coarse fodder.
    • With this latter implement, the corn stalk fodder, shucks, oats, hay and other "roughness" may be finely cut up[…]1855, Southern Cultivator, volume 13, page 258
  4. (Scotland) Abundance, especially of food.
  5. (countable) A measure of how rough something is, such as a surface
    • The surface roughness was low.

roughness meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Telugu

roughness in Hindi

the property of being rough
रूखापन rūkhāpan

roughness in Tamil

கடினத்தன்மை, கரடு, சுரசுரப்பு, முரடான, முரடு

roughness in Urdu

ان گھڑ پن, درشتی

roughness in Telugu

roughness, as of a cat's tongue
కరకు karaku
More languagesFewer languages
roughness in Malayalam
പരുപരുപ്പ് paruparuppŭ, പരുഷത paruṣata
roughness in Kannada
ಪಪ್ಪರಿಕೆ, ಪರಿಗೆ, ನರಡಾಗಿರುವಿಕೆ, ಕರಡಾಗಿರುವಿಕೆ

Examples of roughness in a sentence

  • The roughness of the wool was weirdly pleasant.
  • The soft roughness of golden fur, and the mane flying back in the wind.
  • The song samples Ricky Martin's hit Shake Your Bom-Bom but adds ragga's roughness.

All 10 example sentences with roughness

Forms of roughness

pluralroughnesses

Origin of roughness

Inherited from Middle English roughnes /roughnesse. By surface analysis, rough + -ness. Compare Old English hrēohnes (“roughness”).

Words formed from roughness

Phrases with roughness

Questions about roughness

What does roughness mean?
Roughness means the property of being rough, coarseness.
What is roughness in Hindi?
Roughness in Hindi is रूखापन (rūkhāpan). See Roughness meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is roughness?
Roughness is a noun.
How do you pronounce roughness?
Roughness is pronounced /ˈɹʌf.nəs/ (UK).
What is the plural of roughness?
The plural of roughness is roughnesses.

Words near roughness in the dictionary

  1. roughly speaking
  2. roughneck
  3. roughnecked
  4. roughnecking
  5. roughnecks
  6. roughness
  7. roughness length
  8. roughness lengths
  9. roughnesses
  10. roughometer
  11. roughometers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: roughness (page history and authors); roughness (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); roughness (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); కరకు (Telugu) (page history and authors); പരുപരുപ്പ് (Malayalam) (page history and authors); roughness (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vininn126-roughness.wav.

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