Another word for severest

The winter of 1708 was the severest that Europe had known for a century.

Pharisaic Judaism, put to the severest test to which a religious system has ever been subject, showed itself able to control and idealize life in all its phases.

The first of these periods saw the severest fighting of the campaign.

He sought the most menial offices, and did penance for his sins by the severest austerities.

Exposed to the cold northern and north-eastern winds, and shut out by the Carpathians from the warm southerly winds, Galicia has the severest climate in Austria.