a further enforcement of this fact, let us analyze the word
_rough_. In its literal application, it may designate any surface
that has ridges, projections, or inequalities and is therefore uneven,
jagged, rugged, scraggy, or scabrous. Now frequently a man's face or head
is rough because unshaved or uncombed; also the fur of an animal is rough.
Hence the term could be used for unkempt, disheveled, shaggy, hairy,
coarse, bristly. "The child ran its hand over its father's rough cheek"
and "The bear had a rough coat" are sentences that even the most
unimaginative mind can understand. We speak of rough timber because its
surface has not been planed or made smooth. We speak of a rough diamond
because it is unpolished, uncut. Note that all these uses are literal,
that in each instance some unevenness of surface is referred to.

But man, urged on by the desire to say what he means with more novelty,
strikingness, or force, applied the word to ideas that have no surfaces to
be uneven. He imagined what these ideas would be like if they had
surfaces. Of course in putting these conceptions into language he was
creating figures of speech, some of them startlingly apt, some of them
merely far-fetched. He said a man had a _rough_ voice, as though the
voice were like a cactus in its prickly irregularities. By _rough_ he
meant what his fellows meant when they spoke of the voice as harsh,
grating, jarring, discordant, inharmonious, strident, raucous, or
unmusical. Going farther, that early poet said the weather was
_rough_. He thought of clement weather as being smooth and even, but
of inclement, severe, stormy, tempestuous, or violent weather as being
full of projections to rend and harass one. Thus an everyday use of the
term today was once wrenched and immoderate speech. Possibly the first man
who heard of rough weather was puzzled for a moment, then amused or
delighted as he caught the figure. It did not require great originality to
think of a crowd as _rough_ in its movements. But our poet applied
the idea to an individual. To him a rude, uncivil, impolite, ungracious,
uncourteous, unpolished, uncouth, boorish, blunt, bluff, gruff, brusk, or
burly person was as the unplaned lumber or the unpolished gem; and we
imitative moderns still call such a man _rough_. But we do not think
of the man as covered with projections that need to be taken off, unless
forsooth we receive _rough_ treatment at his hands. And note how far
we have journey