Meaning

adjective unpleasantly stern

adjective disagreeable to the senses

adjective of textures that are rough to the touch or substances consisting of relatively large particles

originFrom Middle English harsk, harisk(e), hask(e), herris. Century derived the term from Old Norse harskr (whence Danish harsk (“rancid”), dialectal Norwegian hersk, Swedish härsk, Swedish härsken); the Middle English Dictionary derives it from that and Middle Low German harsch (“rough”, literally “hairy”) (whence also German harsch), from haer (“hair”), from Old Saxon hār, from Proto-West Germanic…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0