Wiktionary

obscenity

English

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Etymology

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From obscene +‎ -ity, from Latin obscenitas.

Pronunciation

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  • Audio (US):(file)

Noun

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obscenity (countable and uncountable, plural obscenities)

  1. (countable) Something that is obscene.
    Martha wouldn't go into the art museum because, as she put it, "They have obscenities just sitting out, on display!"
  2. (countable) An act of obscene behaviour.
    Bestiality was outlawed as an obscenity in the strongly conservative community.
  3. (countable) Specifically, an offensive word; a profanity; a dirty word.
    Eliza couldn't stand her daughter's music; as she saw it, it was just shouted obscenities and a heavy drum beat.
    • 2001, Dean R. Koontz, One Door Away from Heaven, Random House, →ISBN, page 497:
      Her mother favored a multiyear project: obscenities carved in intricate and clever juxtapositions, descending every finger, curling in lettered whorls across the palm, fanning in offensive rays across the opisthenar, which is the name for the back of the hand, a word that Leilani knew because she had studied the structure of the human hand in detail, the better to understand her difference.
  4. (uncountable) The qualities that make something obscene; lewdness, indecency, or offensive behaviour.
    The coalition of religious conservatives was campaigning against, in their view, rampant obscenity in the entertainment industry.
    • 2008 October 29, Margalit Fox, “Damiano, 80, directed 'Deep Throat'”, in The New York Times‎[1]:
      Over three and a half decades, "Deep Throat" has been damned by religious groups, decried by feminists, defended by First Amendment advocates, derided by critics and debated by social scientists. It dragged for years through local and federal courts around the country in a welter of obscenity trials in which it was variously banned, unbanned and rebanned.

Translations

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