The Only Use of
austere
in
Moby Dick
- And for Radney, though in his infancy he may have laid him down on the lone Nantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though in after life he had long followed our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh from the latitudes of buck-horn handled bowie-knives.†
Chpt 52-54
Definition:
-
(austere) a notable absence of luxury, comfort, or decoration
or:
of a person: stern in manner; or practicing great self-denial