severe

Very bad or intense.

Adjective

  1. Very bad or intense.
    • In the severer cases of hookworm the patient sometimes has an appetite for soil, paper, hair, clay, chalk, starch, and other unpalatables. - 1934, Your Germs and Mine, page 295:
    • Parkinsonism, at its severest, presents itself as an akinetic amimia (as opposed to certain cortical disorders which are amimic akinesias). - 1973, Oliver Sacks, Awakenings:
    • Phoenix and Lubbock are both caught in severe drought, and it is going to get much worse. We may see many such [dust] storms in the decades ahead, along with species extinctions, radical disturbance of ecosystems, and...

    Synonyms: extreme intense

    Antonyms: mild minor

  2. Strict or harsh.
    • a severe taskmaster

    Synonyms: brutal hard heartless heavy rigorous serious callous cold cold-eyed cruel dour flint-hearted forbidding frosty grim hard-boiled hardened hardhearted harsh humorless icy iron-hearted insensate insensitive

    Antonyms: lenient

  3. Sober, plain in appearance, austere.
    • a severe old maiden aunt
    • severe clothing

    Synonyms: modest simple austere bare chaste inornate plain quiet severe spartan unadorned unembellished unextravagant unornamented undecked ungarnished untrimmed unvarnished

Origin

From Middle French, from Latin severus (“severe, serious, grave in demeanor”).

Forms

severer more severe severest most severe

Derived

nonsevere oversevere semisevere severe acute respiratory syndrome severe clear severe combined immunodeficiency severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome severe gale severely severe myoclonic epilepsy of infancy severeness severe tea severity supersevere ultrasevere unsevere