1. severity; rigor 2. harshness of manner; ill temper or irritability 3. roughness of surface; unevenness
Ron Rosenbaum uses this word in his New York Observer article, “Disaster Ignites Debate: Was God In the Tsunami?”:
I recall the asperity with which this easy out (Kushner’s “God is not all-powerful”) was dismissed by Yehuda Bauer, the former head of the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, when I asked him about it in Jerusalem.