Definition of "rough"

The rock was one of those tremendously solid brown, or rather black, rocks which emerge from the sand like something primitive. Rough with crinkled limpet shells and sparsely strewn with locks of dry seaweed, a small boy has to stretch his legs far apart, and indeed to feel rather heroic, before he gets to the top.

1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960,

With my mother's permission and blessings, I set off exultantly for Bombay, leaving my wife with a baby of a few months. But on arrival there, friends told my brother that the Indian Ocean was rough in June and July, and as this was my first voyage, I should not be allowed to sail until November.

1927, M[ohandas] K[aramchand] Gandhi, chapter XII, in Mahadev Desai, transl., The Story of My Experiments with Truth: Translated from the Original in Gujarati, volume I, Ahmedabad, Gujarat: Navajivan Press

But most by Numbers judge a Poet's song, / And smooth or rough, with them

1709, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Criticism, London: […] W. Lewis […], published 1711

In Wellington Street my brother met a couple of sturdy roughs, who had just rushed out of Fleet Street with still wet newspapers and staring placards. "Dreadful catastrophe!" they bawled one to the other down Wellington Street. "Fighting at Weybridge!"

1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 124

In calms you fish; in roughs use songs and dances.

1633, Phineas Fletcher, Eclog 1. Amyntas

[…] roughing is not a part of the sport, and will not be tolerated. Referees will not permit unfair practices that may cause injury to a contestant, and are held strictly responsible for enforcing these rules.

1938, California. State Athletic Commission, Rules, Regulations and Law Regulating Boxing and Wrestling (page 42)

To Rough Horses, a word in familiar use among the dragoons to signify the act of breaking in horses, so as to adapt them to military purposes.

1802, Charles James, A New and Enlarged Military Dictionary

“ […] Oh, but my husband is never so happy as when he is travelling. He likes roughing it. . My husband. . My husband. .”

1920, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “The Escape”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, page 280

I was able to help Trudy set up camp and everything else, of course there are different ways to camp the usual comfortable way or roughed we of course roughed it and I did my best to keep warm.

2013, Anne-Marie K. Kittiphanh, If Life Gave Me LEMONS, I Would Turn It into HONEY

I will warrant they prove such roaring boys as I knew when I served under Lumford and Goring, [...] —sleeping rough on the trenches, and dying stubbornly in their boats. Ah! those merry days are gone.

1826, [Walter Scott], chapter IV, in Woodstock; Or, The Cavalier. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, page 93