austeritynoun/ɔˈstɛɹɪti/

• 1

  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

  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.
• 3

  economicssciencesA 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

  obsoleteSourness and harshness to the taste.