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• n  an abrupt discourteous manner
• n  the property possessed by a slope that is very steep
• n  the quality of happening with headlong haste or without warning

• The resignation of Franz Mntefering, Germany's cigarillo-smoking Vice Chancellor, came with characteristic abruptness.
• Dell's cuts illustrate both the abruptness of the downturn and the almost chaotic nature of today's layoffs, even for companies trying to do right.
• WITH an almost manic abruptness, the nation seemed, as Yeats once wrote,.

• brusqueness
• curtness
• gruffness
• shortness
• precipitousness
• steepness
• precipitateness
• precipitance
• precipitancy
• suddenness

• gradualness

News & Articles

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• A's roster won't change much in 2014
  OAKLAND – Speaking less than 24 hours after his team was eliminated from the playoffs for the second year in a row by a determined Justin Verlander and the Detroit Tigers, A's manager Bob Melvin said Friday the abruptness of this opening-round exit seemed to sting a little bit more.
  Oct. 12, 2013 - The Sacramento Bee

Quotes

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• Jean-Claude Trichet in The Associated Press
  The turmoil was similar to the October 2008 panic after the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers "in terms of the suddenness of the change in sentiment and the abruptness of the flight to safety by international investors," Trichet said.
• Tom Bates in New York Times
  A lot of people who have been here a long time have seen this as a potential rerun of that problem,Mayor Tom Bates said. "The abruptness of it, in the middle of the night, and the mobilization of the police."
• Albie Sachs in Independent Online
  A customer I hardly knew rounded on me and asked aggressively: 'Are you for or against Richard Goldstone?' I was astonished by his abruptness,said Sachs, who replied that Goldstone was his friend.