austerity

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)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. (countable, uncountable)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.”

   “The war-torn first half of the 20th century, together with the railway grouping of 1923, ushered in further austerity in design.”

   “After millenniums of austerity and poverty, the age of limitless “superabundance” was at hand.”

3. (countable, uncountable)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. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)Sourness and harshness to the taste.