obscene
Meaning
-
- Offensive to standards of decency or morality.
- Lewd or lustful.
- Disgusting or repulsive.
- Beyond all reason; excessive.
- Liable to corrupt or deprave.
Synonyms
dirty-minded
morally corrupt
inlecent
Frequency
Hyphenated as
ob‧scene
Pronounced as (IPA)
/əbˈsiːn/
Etymology
In summary
From Middle French obscene (modern French obscène (“indecent, obscene”)), and from its etymon Latin obscēnus, obscaenus (“inauspicious; ominous; disgusting, filthy; offensive, repulsive; indecent, lewd, obscene”). The further etymology is uncertain, but may be from ob- (prefix meaning ‘towards’) + caenum (“dirt, filth; mire, mud”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱweyn- (“to make dirty, soil; filth; mud”)) or scaevus (“left, on the left side; clumsy; (figurative) unlucky”) (from Proto-Indo-European *skeh₂iwo-).
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Notes