[OE. teartnysse: see TART a. and -NESS.] The quality of being tart.
† 1. Severity; painfulness. Obs. (In later quots. fig. from 2.)
c. 1000. in Napier, O. E. Glosses, 85/3158. Acerbitatem, teartnesse.
a. 1602. W. Perkins, Cases Consc. (1619), 61. The sweetnesse of comfort … if it bee alaied with some tartnesse of the Law.
1647. Trapp, Comm. Matt. x. 24. Sweeten me the tartness of all our sufferings with this sentence, as with so much sugar.
2. Sharpness of taste; † pungency (obs.); acidity.
1530. Rastell, Bk. Purgat., III. vii. F iij b. That eyer wyll … vapour out the tartnes and sowernes of that humour.
1538. Elyot, Acrimonia, tartnes, which biteth the tunge, and perceth the heed, as in the taste of garlyke, oynions, and other lyke thynges.
1562. Turner, Herbal, II. 58 b. Vnrype mulberries besyde theyr tartnes they haue also a sournes.
1634. T. Johnson, Parey’s Chirurg., XXVI. vii. (1678), 632. Acidity or tartness is also in verjuice.
1770. Cook, Voy. round World, II. i. (1773), 501. The juice had an agreeable tartness, though but little flavour.
3. fig. Sharpness of disposition, language, etc.; biting or caustic manner or character; acerbity, pungency, acrimony, asperity of tone.
1548. Udall, etc., Erasm. Par. Mark ix. 67. Which with the tartenesse of truth byteth awaye.
1579. Gosson, Sch. Abuse (Arb.), 31. The bitternesse of rebukes, and … the tartenesse of euery taunt.
1607. Shaks., Cor., V. iv. 18. The tartnesse of his face, sowres ripe Grapes.
1709. Hearne, Diary, in Remains (O.H.S.), II. 196. The Plowman’s Tale…. If it were Chaucer’s, it was left perhaps out of his Canterbury Tales, for ye Tartness against the Popish Clergy.
1748. Smollett, Rod. Rand., xliv. I told him with some tartness,… he might have chosen a more convenient opportunity.
1812. Sarah Burney Traits of Nature, I. ix. 168. Miss Barbara Cleveland, who, in this palpable rhodomontade, easily descried a sneer, that weapon of provocation which she was, of all others, the best qualified to retort, was beginning, with a sarcastic air, a reply full of tartness.
1866. Lond. Rev., 3 March, 242/1. Lord Russell with a good deal of tartness declared that before February was out the Bill should be before the house.
