severe
Definitions
General English
- adjective having a very bad effect
Slang
- adjective impressive, excellent. An all-purpose vogue term of approval used first by British mods in 1963 and 1964 and later by American teenagers and their British imitators in the 1970s and 1980s.
Sports
- adjective used for describing an injury that is very bad or painful
Origin & History of “severe”
Severe is a descendant, via Old French
severe, of Latin
sevērus, a
word of uncertain
origin.
English asseveration ‘firm declaration’ (16
th c.) comes
from its Latin derivative
asseverāre ‘assert earnestly’.
