different between severe vs somewhat

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /s??v??/ (US) IPA^(key): /s??v?r/
• Rhymes: -??(?)

Adjective

severe (comparative severer or more severe, superlative severest or most severe)

1. Very bad or intense.
2. Strict or harsh.

   a severe taskmaster

3. Sober, plain in appearance, austere.

   a severe old maiden aunt

Synonyms

Antonyms

• (very bad or intense): mild
• (very bad or intense): minor
• (strict or harsh): lenient

Derived terms

• severely (adverb)
• severity (noun)
• severeness (noun)

Translations

Further reading

• severe in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• severe in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• severe at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• Reeves, everse, reeves, servee

Esperanto

Adverb

severe

1. severely

Related terms

• severa

Italian

Adjective

severe

1. feminine plural of severo

Latin

Verb

s?v?re

1. third-person plural perfect active indicative of ser?

Adjective

sev?re

1. vocative masculine singular of sev?rus

References

• severe in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• severe in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• severe in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette

Serbo-Croatian

Noun

severe (Cyrillic spelling ??????)

1. vocative singular of sever

English

Alternative forms

• (British, dialectal) summat (and variants listed there)

Etymology

some +? what

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?s?mw?t/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?s?mw?t/
• Hyphenation: some?what
• Rhymes: -?t

Adverb

somewhat (not comparable)

1. (degree) To a limited extent or degree.

Translations

See also

• slightly

Pronoun

somewhat

1. (archaic) Something.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.12:

     Proceeding to the midst he stil did stand, / As if in minde he somewhat had to say […].

   • a. 1716, Robert Trail, sermon on the Lord's Prayer

     But this text and theme I am upon, relates to somewhat far higher and greater, than all the beholdings of his glory that ever any saint on earth received.

Translations

Noun

somewhat (countable and uncountable, plural somewhats)

1. More or less; a certain quantity or degree; a part, more or less; something.
   • 1682, Nehemiah Grew, Anatomy of Plants

     its taste, which is plainly acid, and somewhat rough

   • Somewhat of his good sense will suffer, in this transfusion, and much of the beauty of his thoughts will be lost.

   • To these ladies a man often recommends himself while he is commending another woman; and, while he is expressing ardour and generous sentiments for his mistress, they are considering what a charming lover this man would make to them, who can feel all this tenderness for an inferior degree of merit. Of this, strange as it may seem, I have seen many instances besides Mrs Fitzpatrick, to whom all this really happened, and who now began to feel a somewhat for Mr Jones, the symptoms of which she much sooner understood than poor Sophia had formerly done.

   • 1885, Richard F. Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Night 558:

     Then they set somewhat of food before me, whereof I ate my fill, and gave me somewhat of clothes wherewith I clad myself anew and covered my nakedness; after which they took me up into the ship, […]

2. A person or thing of importance; a somebody.
   • c. 1810-1820, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Notes on Troilus and Cressida

     Pity that the researchful notary has not either told us in what century, and of what history, he was a writer, or been simply content to depose, that Lollius, if a writer of that name existed at all, was a somewhat somewhere.

   • ?, Alfred Tennyson, St. Simeon Stylites

     Here come those that worship me? Ha! ha! / They think that I am somewhat.