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say it: ruhf
rough is an adjective, adverb, noun and verb meaning "having or caused by an irregular surface". It is pronounced /ˈɹʌf/ — ruhf. It carries 18 recorded senses.
(of persons or behavior) lacking refinement or finesse
“she was a diamond in the rough”
“rough manners”
not quite exact or correct
“the approximate time was 10 o'clock”
“a rough guess”
“a ballpark estimate”
violently agitated and turbulent
“boisterous winds and waves”
“the fierce thunders roar me their music”
“rough weather”
“rough seas”
ready and able to resort to force or violence
“pugnacious spirits...lamented that there was so little prospect of an exhilarating disturbance”
“they were rough and determined fighting men”
unpleasantly stern
“wild and harsh country full of hot sand and cactus”
“the nomad life is rough and hazardous”
with roughness or violence (`rough' is an informal variant for `roughly')
“he was pushed roughly aside”
“they treated him rough”
colloquialism
the part of a golf course bordering the fairway where the grass is not cut short
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for rough come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.