Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to live deprived of life’s material comforts; not simply to be poor, but to volunteer oneself, as in camping, the forces etc, for such hardy existence; thus rough-un n., a good spot for sleeping out of doors.

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: A prisoner who can pay for being alone, chuses two poor chums, who for a stipulated price, called chummage, give up their share of the room, and sleep on the stairs, or as the term is, ruff it. [Ibid.] To lie rough; to lie all night in one’s clothes: called also roughing it.
c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Rough, to lie rough, to lie all night in one’s clothes; called also roughing it. also to sleep on the bare Deck of a Ship, on which the party is commonly advised by his brother Sailors to chuse the softest Board.
1814		Austen Mansfield Park (1926) 388: Take care of Fanny, mother. She is tender, and not used to rough it like the rest of us.
1824		Annals of Sporting 1 Feb. 127: [He]presented Mr S. with a ticket [...] for the grand stand. This, however, he declined, and roughed it in the ring.
1832		H. Wilson letter 26 June in Bourne Blackmailing the Chancellor 66: [A]sk yourself in sickness and pain the whole year round you could exert yourself and wait on yourself and rough it so as to live on what would serve you when in health?
1844		A. Smith Adventures of Mr Ledbury 68: One or two other young men who were roughing it with knapsacks like themselves.
1853		R.S. Surtees Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour 345: I’ve only bachelor 'commodation to offer you; but p’raps you’ll not mind roughing it a bit?
1857		Paul Letters from Canterbury 94: Read Mr. Moody’s ‘Roughing it in the Bush.’.
1865		M.L. Byrn Adventures of Fudge Fumble 5: He would have an opportunity of ‘roughing it.’.
1876		C. Hindley Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack 192: After a few years of knocking about and roughing it, she was anything but clean in her person or manners.
1889		J.K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat 190: If we didn’t mind roughing it [...] there was a little beershop half a mile down the Eton road.
1890		Sporting Times 15 Feb. 1/1: She showed what an English Lady is capable of when compelled to ‘rough it.’.
1892		Salt Lake Herald (UT) 7 Dec. 8/2: As he stepped off the elevator he excused his ‘roughing it’ appearance.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 68: Rough It, to put up with inconveniences on the track [i.e. living as a vagrant].
1900		Boy’s Own Paper 15 Dec. 167: A sailorman must always be able to adjust himself to circumstances, for he is often called upon to rough it and play Robinson Crusoe.
1903		N. Gould Straight Goer (1915) 25: ‘You have roughed it?’ [...] ‘I can stand it’.
1911		Gem 30 Sept. 22: We don’t mind roughing it, sir.
1917		‘A-No. 1’ From Coast to Coast with Jack London 15: I was tramp-named ‘Cigaret’ and ‘Sailor Jack’ by fellows with whom I’ve roughed it on land and water.
1924		S. Scott Human Side of Crook and Convict Life 82: The horrors of prison life, so much more potently awful to a man of gentle upbringing than to one used to ‘roughing it.’.
1933		‘Goat’ Laven Rough Stuff 108: I was making plenty of money those days, and living nice and enjoying life, it was quite a change from roughing it in the country.
1943		E. Pyle Here Is Your War (1945) 43: They were really roughing it.
1959		J. Osborne World of Paul Slickey Act II: I think we have all learned to rough it in the last few years.
1968		P. Terson Apprentices (1970) I iv: I tell you, we’re going away this fortnight [...] Kipping out, roughing it. None of your thermos flask week-ends in Brid.
1979		C. Dexter Service of All the Dead (1980) 138: Been roughing it long?
1981		P. Radley Jack Rivers & Me 150: Don worry putting Jack’s pyjamas back under the pillow [...] he’ll be roughing it for a while.
1989		(con. 1984) P. Theroux My Secret Hist. (1990) 467: I like roughing it.
1999		Indep. on Sun. Rev. 10 Oct. 14: Spent seven months roughing it in Kent.
2000		Guardian Rev. 31 Mar. 5: Grossed-out city yuppie, objecting to roughing it. (We have to sleep in tents?).

2. to fight.

1850		Fast Man 3:1 n.p.: MY DEAR OLD GIRL, I always thought you a ‘Stunner’ for a ten minutes row, but now I am convinced of your successful go in on [...] the long shicksters from the Masque, that you could rough it for an hour.
1906		S. Ford Shorty McCabe 154: We was roughin’ it all over the ring.
1928		J. Callahan Man’s Grim Justice 32: We dove into a clinch and began to rough it.

3. (US) to treat roughly.

1913–14

Van Loan ‘No Business’ in Taking the Count 150: Give him a tough guy [...] that’ll rough it with him.