roughishadj.
/ˈrʌfɪʃ/, U.S. /ˈrəfɪʃ/ Somewhat rough.
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the world > space > shape > unevenness > [adjective] > rough > somewhat
roughish1614
1614 G. Markham 2nd Bk. Eng. Husbandman i. vi. 31 You shall chuse a ruffish earth loose and well dunged, and you shall cast vp your beds high and narrow.
1683 G. V. N. tr. J. Commelin Belgick xix. 60 The outward Pill is almost of a Saffron Yellow, Roughish, a little Bitter in the Tast.
1730 T. Fuller Exanthematologia i. 152 The sixth Day,..a roughish Scurfiness comes upon the Forehead and Face.
1796 W. Withering Arrangem. Brit. Plants (ed. 3) II. 93 Straw 3-cornered, angles acute, roughish.
1813 J. Austen Let. 3 Nov. (1995) 248 It is but roughish weather for any one in a tender state.
1850 L. Hunt Autobiogr. xv. 226 Mr. Wordsworth had a deep, roughish, but not unpleasing voice.
1888 ‘R. Boldrewood’ Robbery under Arms i He could..ride a roughish horse too.
1958 R. Liddell Morea i. 44 The road..was roughish but not really bad.
1974 V. Nabokov Let. 11 Mar. (1989) 530 Working seven hours a day in order to finish turning by hand a roughish draft, of some 80,000 words in all.
2003 Independent 9 Aug. (Mag.) 26/1 If you have a roughish kind of boundary hedge, you can plant oak for the purple hairstreak.
Compounds
C1. Modifying participles, as roughish-looking, roughish-mouthed, roughish-skinned, etc.
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1808 J. E. Smith Eng. Bot. XXVII. 1896 Roughish-leaved Dog-rose.
1840 G. C. G. F. Berkeley Sandron Hall III. xxxix. 111 I 'm blessed if there an't a roughish-looking customer a pulling at the pole.
1902 10th Rep. N.Z. Departm. Agric. 343 (table) Ashleaf Kidney..White colour, kidney shape, roughish-skinned; fair potato, fair cropper.
1908 T. Hardy Dynasts: Pt. 3rd vii. iv. 299 He was as grim a devil as ever lived, And roughish-mouthed withal.
1933 A. A. Stevens Recoll. Bookman 282 Suddenly we saw, running towards us, two or three rather roughish-looking men.
2006 Toronto Star (Nexis) 18 June d10 The driver, a roughish-looking Portuguese man, asked the workers there if they were Polish.
C2. Botany. Prefixed to adjectives with the sense ‘roughish and ——’, as roughish-hirsute, roughish-puberulent, etc.
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1837 W. Darlington Flora Cestrica (ed. 2) 34 Fruit ovoid, obscurely triangular, beaked, subpedicellate, roughish tomentose.
1853 A. Gray Plantæ Wrightianæ Texano-Neo-Mexicanæ in Smithsonian Contrib. Knowl. 5 vi. 77 Stems..2–3 feet high, roughish-hirsute.
1922 Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 49 183 Nuttalia marginata... Seemingly a biennial, the stem 3 dm. or more high, white, smooth below, roughish pubescent above.
1995 A. H. Liogier Descr. Flora Puerto Rico & Adjacent Islands cxxv. 339 Shrub to 3 m tall, the stem roughish-puberulent above.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2011; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
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