obscene

Meaning

1. Offensive to standards of decency or morality.
2. Lewd or lustful.
3. Disgusting or repulsive.
4. Beyond all reason; excessive.
5. Liable to corrupt or deprave.

indecent

vulgar

dirty-minded

morally corrupt

inlecent

Frequency

Hyphenated as

ob‧scene

Pronounced as (IPA)

/əbˈsiːn/

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-).