Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use harshly in a sentence

12 example sentences · adverb

Harshly means in a harsh manner; severely. Example: “You made your best honest effort; if they judge you harshly, that’s their problem, not yours.”

Examples of harshly by meaning

adverbIn a harsh manner; severely.

  • In the little fair created by the costers' barrows the evening only seemed beginning; and the naphtha flares made one's eyes ache, the men's voices grated harshly, and the girls' faces saddened one.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
  • They judged me harshly for a few paltry actions.1968, Paul Ritchie, Confessions of a People Lover: A Novel - Page 51

More sentences with harshly

  • You made your best honest effort; if they judge you harshly, that’s their problem, not yours.From the entry problem
  • The king ruled his domain harshly.From the entry domain
  • "To teach a lesson that you must learn, mannlein," she said harshly.1983, Norman Spinrad, The Void Captain's Tale, New York, N.Y.: Timescape Books, →ISBN. From the entry männlein
  • Ernest laughed harshly and savagely when he had gained the street.1908 February 19, Jack London, The Iron Heel, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC. From the entry gain
  • The evilists will be punished most harshly.2019, O.Y. ven Ghaydle, America and the Entire World Need YOU to Know to Spread the Word. From the entry evilist
  • The perils of my blanking out were brought home to me particularly harshly one night when we were at the playpark quite late, again.2015, Amy Fusselman, Savage Park, page 67. From the entry playpark
  • Driving out here, along a linear, Springsteenian freeway, the dales and the chimneys compete for attention, each of them equally irregular and harshly beautiful.2012, Owen Hatherley, A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys Through Urban Britain. From the entry Springsteenian
  • “Why do you think he would react so harshly?” A slowball question he hoped she would knock out of the park from a pro-abortion perspective.2009, Tom Cavenagh, A Matter of Truth, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 150. From the entry slowball
  • Credulousness is always more harshly judged than incredulousness, though they are both merely different aspects of the same fundamental failing, namely, lack of true scepticism.1911 Oct, Ernest Jones, “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life”, in The American Journal of Psychology, volume 22, number 4, pages 525–6. From the entry credulousness
  • Generalizing harshly and broadly but implying “you know which ones I mean” is an intellectual and rhetorical laziness that is not allowed to pass anywhere else in these communities.2016 March 11, Jennifer Coates, “I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out.”, in Medium. From the entry laziness

Meaning of harshly

  1. adverb In a harsh manner; severely.

Full definition of harshly

Questions about harshly in a sentence

How do you use harshly in a sentence?
Harshly is used as an adverb. For example: “You made your best honest effort; if they judge you harshly, that’s their problem, not yours.”
What is a short sentence with harshly?
“The king ruled his domain harshly.”
What does harshly mean?
Harshly means in a harsh manner; severely.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: harshly (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use harshly in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/harshly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.