Austerity

n.	1.	Sourness and harshness to the taste.
	2.	Severity of manners or life; extreme rigor or strictness; harsh discipline. The austerity of John the Baptist. - Milton.
	3.	Plainness; freedom from adornment; severe simplicity. Partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. - Hawthorne.

Noun

1.

austerity - the trait of great self-denial (especially refraining from worldly pleasures) Synonyms: nonindulgence, asceticism

Albigensianism, Catharism, Franciscanism, Lenten fare, Sabbatarianism, Spartan simplicity, Spartanism, Trappism, Waldensianism, Yoga, abstinence, anchoritic monasticism, anchoritism, asceticism, astringency, austerity program, authoritarianism, baldness, bareness, candor, canniness, care, carefulness, chariness, common speech, demandingness, directness, discipline, economic planning, economicalness, economy, economy of means, eremitism, exactingness, exiguity, exiguousness, false economy, fasting, flagellation, forehandedness, frankness, frugality, frugalness, good management, grimness, hardness, harshness, homespun, household words, husbandry, inclemency, inornateness, jejuneness, jejunity, leanness, maceration, management, matter-of-factness, meagerness, meanness, mendicantism, meticulousness, miserliness, monachism, monasticism, mortification, narrowness, naturalness, niggardliness, openness, paltriness, parsimoniousness, parsimony, plain English, plain speaking, plain speech, plain style, plain words, plainness, prosaicness, prosiness, providence, prudence, prudential administration, puniness, puritanism, regimentation, restrainedness, rigid discipline, rigor, roughness, ruggedness, rustic style, scantiness, scantness, scrawniness, scrimpiness, self-denial, self-mortification, severity, simpleness, simplicity, skimpiness, slenderness, slightness, slim pickings, slimness, smallness, soberness, spareness, sparingness, starkness, sternness, stinginess, straightforwardness, strictness, stringency, thinness, thrift, thriftiness, tight purse strings, toughness, unadorned style, unadornedness, unaffectedness, unelaborateness, unfanciness, unfussiness, ungentleness, unimaginativeness, unpoeticalness, unwastefulness, vernacular, voluntary poverty