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rugged

adjectiveadjectiveverbattested in dialogue

  • //ˈɹʌɡ.ɪd//
  • //ɹʌɡd//

Broken into sharp or irregular points; uneven; not smooth; rough.

adjective

  1. 1

    Broken into sharp or irregular points; uneven; not smooth; rough.

    BY and by, after a rugged climb, we halted on the summit of a hill which commanded a far-reaching view.

  2. 2

    Not neat or regular; irregular, uneven.

    Commercially produced yarn, such as rayon, produces a cloth with a smoother, shinier look than hand-spun cotton, but the uneven, rugged look of hand-spun cotton can be quite appealing.

  3. 3

    Rough with bristly hair; shaggy.

    His hair was light and rather thin; his face strong and rugged from exposure, and his eyes narrow and observant.

  4. 4

    Strong, sturdy, well-built.

    Many women and men delude themselves into thinking that only the hardest and most rugged man is attractive and to many it may be the case.

  5. 5

    Rocky and bare of plantlife.

    As the train wound along the river valleys through western Pennsylvania the scenery grew more rugged and the painted houses of Lancaster County gave way to dirty clapboard dwellings and shack homes clinging to the mountainside.

    Hidden within 30,000 acres of rugged private land, the ranch is cocooned by peaks and canyons in all directions.

    Much of the area can be seen only by hikers who travel without trails to the higher reaches of this rugged mountain range.

  6. 6

    Harsh; austere; hard

  7. 7

    Stormy; turbulent; tempestuous

  8. 8

    Harsh; grating; unpleasant sounding or looking

  9. 9

    Sour; surly; frowning; wrinkled

    "Ah!" sighed the unimaginative Granby, and his honest, rugged face grew clouded. Pepper puffed in silence for a moment or two; then spoke.

  10. 10

    Violent; rude; boisterous

  11. 11

    Vigorous; robust; hardy

    "Her gaze rested for a moment on the muscular neck, heavy corded, almost bull-like, bronzed by the sun, spilling over with rugged health and strength..."

  12. 12

    Designed to reliably operate in harsh usage environments and conditions.

    Psion, which supplies a range of rugged hand held computers, has lost nearly 2% after announcing a plunge into the red.

Etymology

From Middle English rugged, roggyd, ruggyd, derived from Old Norse rǫgg (“tuft, shagginess”), equivalent to rug (“rough, woollen material”) + -ed. Compare Old Swedish ruggoter (“wrinkled”), Swedish rugga (“to roughen”), Swedish ruggig (“shaggy”), Icelandic rögg (“shagginess”), Old Norse raggaðr (“tufted”), dialectal Danish raggad (“shaggy”).

adjective

  1. 1

    Having a rug or rugs.

  2. 2

    Covered with a rug.

    Please put sharp objects on the rugged shelf.

Etymology

From rug + -ed.

verb

  1. 1

    Also a form of rugsimple past and past participle of rug

Forms

comparative
more rugged
superlative
most rugged
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).