English

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Middle French crudité, from Latin crūditās. Doublet of crudité.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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crudity (countable and uncountable, plural crudities)

  1. (uncountable) The state of being crude.
  2. (countable) A crude act or characteristic.
    • 1889, Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying: An Observation:
      What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.
    • 2021 October 31, Colleen Long, “How ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ became code for insulting Joe Biden”, in AP News, Associated Press:
      Veteran GOP ad maker Jim Innocenzi had no qualms about the coded crudity, calling it “hilarious.”
  3. (obsolete, medicine) Indigestion; undigested food in the stomach; badly-concocted humours.
    • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], “Diet rectified in quantity”, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, [], Oxford, Oxfordshire: [] John Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition 2, section 2, member 1, subsection 2, page 309:
      For there is no meat whatſoeuer, though otherwiſe wholeſome and good, but if it be vnſeaſonably taken, or immoderatly vſed, more then the ſtomack can well beare, will ingender crudity, and doe much harme.

Synonyms

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