The word "asperity" is correct and can be used in written English
It usually refers to a sharpness, roughness, or harshness in someone's manner or attitude. For example, "The teacher spoke with asperity, reprimanding the students for not paying attention."
This is a famous exchange, but the reasons for Johnson's asperity, other than that he was fond of exercising it, got lost in the long historical process that forged a new British identity.
He notes with asperity that it was not her place to press Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf to take off his uniform — much less to tell Rummy himself that the pinstripes on his old pants had faded away.
Mr Hollinghurst cannot be accused of inconsistency.He provides readers with a modern equivalent to Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited", albeit with knowing asperity and pastiche.
In an exchange last year in Mid dle East Quarterly, Mr Shlaim mounted a spirited (and, given the asperity of Mr Karsh's attack, good-natured) defence of his collusion thesis.
Connolly called him on the one hand "an inspired simpleton, a Holy Russian idiot" and on the other "a publicity-seeking individual full of administrative energy and rentier asperity".
Uruguay's asperity has been sharpened by continuing protests in Argentina against two big paper projects, which critics claim will pollute rivers.Uruguay may be bluffing.
British diplomats dealing with Madison encountered "asperity of temper and fluency of expression".
Don DeLillo has responds with asperity to those who criticise his condemnations of America, but he's no pugilist.
Further targets for Amis's asperity included his vegetarianism and his teetotalism.
David McCullough's portrait may not quite give us the battered titan in all his raw, sulfurous asperity, but his vivid storytelling will surely persuade a generation to look again at this obstinate, brave, and most deeply philosophical of American patriarchs.
Writing with the gorgeous asperity of a free-jazz pianist — the jump and punch in his best songs can remind you of the way Thelonious Monk looked as he danced joyfully around his piano during a concert — Sondheim makes musicals that far transcend what his early mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, brought to the American stage: an occasionally solipsistic, bordering on schmaltzy, social consciousness.
