hoarse
Americanadjective
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gratingly harsh or raucous in tone
-
low, harsh, and lacking in intensity
a hoarse whisper
-
having a husky voice, as through illness, shouting, etc
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of hoarse
1350–1400; Middle English hors < Old Norse *hārs (assumed variant of hāss ); replacing Middle English hoos, Old English hās, cognate with Old High German heis, Old Saxon hēs
Explanation
A hoarse voice is deep and rough and kind of hard to make out. People get hoarse when they're sick, or when they are calling in sick to work. If you're supposed to perform in a play tonight, you'd better hope you don't get hoarse: a hoarse voice doesn't sound the way it should. It's scratchy, gruff, and hard to understand. Sometimes people get hoarse from talking too much. Inhaling smoke can make you hoarse too. On the other hand, some people have raspy, husky, rough-sounding voices that sound hoarse all the time. You could ask them, "Are you hoarse?" They might say, "Nah, I always sound like this."
Vocabulary lists containing hoarse
List 3
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"Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, Act II
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The Cay
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
But the most notable aspect of the president’s hoarse and breathy address was what he didn’t say.
From Slate ● Jul. 17, 2026
The group’s primal musical stew came from thoroughly American ingredients: ragged blues, chugging rock, narcotic country and hoarse soul.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 6, 2026
Several supporters in Dakar, their voices still hoarse and weary, told AFP they were disappointed by such threats.
From Barron's ● Jan. 19, 2026
“I still recorded the show with my very hoarse voice, but then put the AI voice over that, telling the audience from the very beginning, I’m sick,” Mandy said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 12, 2025
“Yes,” said the girl, her voice hoarse and desperate.
From "Night Owls" by A.R. Vishny
But the enthusiasm of the crowd remained undiminished, with fans staying on their feet and singing, their voices growing hoarser, through all nine innings.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2018
The young man bemused by the absurdities of civilization comes on now like a comic equivalent of an Old Testament Prophet, harsher and hoarser and invigorated with age.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2017
Rufus Sewell stars as Zen, looking very Italian, but sounding exactly like Rufus Sewell, only hoarser.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 3, 2011
Costello winced, and his voice got suddenly hoarser.
From Time Magazine Archive
From the street, the crying woman’s voice rose again and again, hoarser and thinner than the last time.
From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Soon, she would be holding Luna’s hand for the last time, touching her face for the last time—speaking her words of love in the hoarsest of whispers.
From "The Girl Who Drank the Moon" by Kelly Barnhill
He explained to them in his hoarsest tones that it stood to reason he could never have got in with the pace Ranny'd got on him.
From The Combined Maze by May Sinclair
He has lain, who knows in what Cellars; perhaps in Legendre's; fed by a steak of Legendre's killing: but, since April, the bull-frog voice of him sounds again; hoarsest of earthly cries.
From The French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle
Whenever they met, even after a brief separation, he expressed his feelings by his hoarsest screech.
From A Daughter of the Forest by Evelyn Raymond
This roused the sleeper, who, half groaning, and puffing the air through his nostrils, grumbled out, in the hoarsest voice that I ever heard, and in a tone of surly impatience, "Who is there?"
From Edgar Huntly or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker by Charles Brockden Brown
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
