austerity

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   Severity of manners or life; extreme rigor or strictness; harsh discipline.

   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. 2
   noun

   Freedom from adornment; plainness; severe simplicity.

   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.

3. 3
   noun

   A policy of deficit-cutting, which by definition requires lower spending, higher taxes, or both.

   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. 4
   noun

   the trait of great self-denial (especially refraining from worldly pleasures)

5. 5
   noun

   Sourness and harshness to the taste.

Etymology

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