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austerity

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek αὐστηρότης (austērótēs, “bitter, harsh”). Morphologically austere +‎ -ity.

Pronunciation

Noun

austerity (countable and uncountable, plural austerities)

  1. Severity of manners or life; extreme rigor or strictness; harsh discipline.
    • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 23, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
      The most rigid and noted of the English ladies resident in the French capital acknowledged and countenanced her; the virtuous Lady Elderbury, the severe Lady Rockminster, the venerable Countess of Southdown—people, in a word, renowned for austerity, and of quite a dazzling moral purity:—so great and beneficent an influence had the possession of ten (some said twenty) thousand a year exercised upon Lady Clavering’s character and reputation
  2. Freedom from adornment; plainness; severe simplicity.
    • 2019 April 12, Annalisa Quinn, “The Small Rebellions of Sally Rooney’s Normal People”, in The Atlantic‎, archived from the original on 1 May 2020:
      One critic [Madeleine Schwartz] recently noted that the politics of Rooney’s novels were largely “gestural,” with airy mentions of Gaza or austerity protests but not much radical substance.
    • 2021 October 20, Dr Joseph Brennan, “A key part of our diverse railway heritage”, in RAIL, number 942, page 56:
      The war-torn first half of the 20th century, together with the railway grouping of 1923, ushered in further austerity in design.
    • 2025 March 18, Samuel Moyn, “Can Democrats Learn to Dream Big Again?”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN, archived from the original on 27 March 2025:
      After millenniums of austerity and poverty, the age of limitless “superabundance” was at hand.
  3. (economics) A policy of deficit-cutting, which by definition requires lower spending, higher taxes, or both.
    • 2012 April 23, Angelique Chrisafis, “François Hollande on top but far right scores record result in French election”, in the Guardian‎:
      He said France clearly wanted to "close one page and open another". He reiterated his opposition to austerity alone as the only way out of Europe's crisis: "My final duty, and I know I'm being watched from beyond our borders, is to put Europe back on the path of growth and employment."
  4. (obsolete) Sourness and harshness to the taste.

Antonyms

  • (antonym(s) of “severity of manners or life”): comfort

Derived terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

References

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Italian

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English austerity.

Noun

austerity f (invariable)

  1. austerity

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