husky
/ˈhʌs.ki/adjective
Hoarse, rough-sounding; also stout or husk-covered
From English husk (Dry outer covering of a plant or fruit).
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Modern English
husky — Hoarse, rough-sounding; also stout or husk-covered
The story
A husky voice is rough and throaty, as if its sound were dry or tough like a husk. English forms the adjective from husk and the suffix -y. The word is recorded in 1697 for something abounding in husks: John Dryden used “a husky harvest” in his translation of Virgil’s Georgics. By the nineteenth century it also described a rough voice; Robert Louis Stevenson used it in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1886. Another sense, “burly” or “stout,” appears in Hamlin Garland’s 1910 Other Main-Travelled Roads. Stevenson also used the older slang sense “belligerent” in Treasure Island, published in 1883.