rough – English adjective declension

English adjective forms of rough

Adjective: rough

Comparison Forms

Synthetic

Comparativerougher
Superlativeroughest

Perifrastic

Sample Sentences

  • rough hands
  • rough stone
  • rough surface
  • The rock was one of those tremendously solid brown, or rather black, rocks which emerge from the sand like something primitive. 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; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC:]
  • a rough copy
  • a rough estimate
  • a rough guess
  • a rough plan
  • a rough sketch of a building
  • rough sea
  • rough water
  • rough weather
  • With my mother's permission and blessings, I set off exultantly for Bombay, leaving my wife with a baby of a few months. 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 Original in Gujarati, volume I, Ahmedabad, Gujarat: Navajivan Press, →OCLC:]
  • Being a teenager nowadays can be rough.
  • His manners are a bit rough, but he means well.
  • "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:]
  • the rough bit of town
  • rough words
  • This box has been through some rough handling.
  • a rough tone
  • a rough voice
  • But most by Numbers judge a Poet's song, / And smooth or rough, with them [1711 May, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Criticism, London: […] W[illiam] Lewis […]; and sold by W[illiam] Taylor […], T[homas] Osborn[e] […], and J[ohn] Graves […], →OCLC:]
  • a rough diamond
  • 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:]

Adjectives inflected like rough

sallow, smooth, slight, sleigh, sordid, somber, shweet, shrill, shrewd, yellow, yaller, hard knock, DRY, Greek, cut short, unquiet, unclean, indiscreet, chipper, straicht, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)

Etymology

1. From Middle English rough, roughe, roȝe, row, rou, ru, ruȝ, ruh, from Old English rūg, rūh, from Proto-Germanic *rūhaz.
2. 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"”). See: Dutch Adjectives 'ruig', German Adjectives 'rau'.

Verbs referencing "rough"

German Adjectives rau, Dutch Adjectives rof, Finnish Adjectives raffi, Portuguese Adjectives rófe.