The Collaborative International Dictionary
Rough \Rough\, n.
Boisterous weather. [Obs.]
--Fletcher.-
A rude fellow; a coarse bully; a rowdy.
In the rough, in an unwrought or rude condition; unpolished; as, a diamond or a sketch in the rough.
Contemplating the people in the rough.
--Mrs. Browning.
Wiktionary
prep.phr. In an unwrought or unrefined condition; unpolished.
Usage examples of "in the rough".
She had even put the Tiger God and Green Suite on display, complete with the silver-green diamond in the rough.
Everything for this just man was melody and perfume in the rough road which souls take to return to the celestial country.
A tall horse, that left a fistful of his mane roven in the rough boards under the eaves.
No whistling, and Sweyn always whistled, and these feet came in unusual haste, clearly audible in the rough grass and small stones.
The men on the dozens of ships bobbing in the rough seas around him were his employees.
He paused, his eyes on the flecks of fire catching in the rough, rich walls around him.
All of them were dressed in the rough clothes of street toughs, and all were holding cudgels in their hands.
She, clad in the rough, more-or-less cured pelt of a wolflike beast, looked like a cavewoman, looked as her ancestors on this very world must have looked.
For others the asperities, the stubborn endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with Nature in the rough.