The phrase "austere means" is not correct in standard written English.
It seems to be an incomplete expression and lacks clarity without additional context.
Example: "In this context, austere means a strict and severe lifestyle."
Alternatives: "austere definition" or "austere interpretation".
He had no truck with the 20th-century avant garde; he wrote music which, if sometimes challenging and austere, was meant to be understood.
I would hope that what is now considered the old-fashioned style of cabernet -- leaner-bodied, drier, more austere wine meant to go with food rather than occupy center stage -- would return to favor, not necessarily as the predominant style but as an acceptable alternative.
Its executive director, Howard Silver, explained in an e-mail that "the conduct of science … in austere times sometimes means difficult choices".
"Austere" and "reserved" mean joyless and depressed.
DARATT The writer-director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun builds a visually austere parable (the title means "dry season") involving a young man, Atim Ali Barkaii), who is sent by his blind grandfather (the excellent Khayar Oumar Defallah) to avenge the death, during a forty-year civil war in Chad, of the father he never knew.
But Ms. Hergovich plowed right in, teaching five classes a day and soaking up life in New York -- which in her case meant an austere apartment in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx, far from the skyscrapers she knew from movies and postcards.
The lack of improvement before Christmas, despite his austere regime in Australia, meant that Flower was unable to include him in his World Cup squad, something that rankled and led to the selection of Michael Yardy who, illness notwithstanding, was out of his depth in ODIs.
So I'm grateful that enough imaginative portrayals of the cloister exist to transport me by bookish means into these austere surroundings.
The pieces are richly textured but also austere in some ways, which means they could easily fade into the background of a home.
This is an austere explanation of what Kant meant, or perhaps of what he ought to have meant, when he said that the judgment of taste claims "universal validity", by contrast with judgments about the niceness of Canary-wine.
