asperity

nown

Definition:

1 : roughness of manner or of temper : harshness of behavior or speech that expresses bitterness or anger

2 : rigor, severity

3 : roughness of surface : unevenness; also : a tiny projection from a surface

4 : roughness of sound

Example:

1 : His asperity made him hard to approach and harder to converse with, especially when asking questions about the past.

2 : The asperity of her confusion left her frightned, and we couldn’t get any answers from her.

Personal Commentary:

Okay, I’d say this is another word in case you run into it in reading. Especially since it has many uses, and not all of them are easy to pull from context. I think I’ve ran into examples of the second definition, but I can’t say anything for which use is common vs rare.