| / English Dictionary |
VULGAR
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Conspicuously and tastelessly indecent
Example:
full of language so vulgar it should have been edited
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Similar:
indecent (offensive to good taste especially in sexual matters)
Derivation:
vulgarity (the quality of lacking taste and refinement)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Being or characteristic of or appropriate to everyday language
Example:
the technical and vulgar names for an animal species
Synonyms:
common; vernacular; vulgar
Classified under:
Similar:
informal (used of spoken and written language)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Of or associated with the great masses of people
Example:
the unwashed masses
Synonyms:
common; plebeian; unwashed; vulgar
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
lowborn (of humble birth or origins)
Derivation:
vulgarize (cater to popular taste to make popular and present to the general public; bring into general or common use)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Lacking refinement or cultivation or taste
Example:
the vulgar display of the newly rich
Synonyms:
coarse; common; rough-cut; uncouth; vulgar
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
unrefined ((used of persons and their behavior) not refined; uncouth)
Derivation:
vulgarity (the quality of lacking taste and refinement)
vulgarize (act in a vulgar manner)
vulgarize (debase and make vulgar)
Context examples:
In the latter case, he may well approximate to what the vulgar have called the 'missing link.'
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
She was small of her age, with no glow of complexion, nor any other striking beauty; exceedingly timid and shy, and shrinking from notice; but her air, though awkward, was not vulgar, her voice was sweet, and when she spoke her countenance was pretty.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
The purchaser is a foreign nobleman, Count de Ville, who effected the purchase himself paying the purchase money in notes 'over the counter,' if your Lordship will pardon us using so vulgar an expression.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
“Six tea, two salt, and a pair of sugars, I have at different times borrowed money on, in secret, with my own hands. But the twins are a great tie; and to me, with my recollections, of papa and mama, these transactions are very painful. There are still a few trifles that we could part with. Mr. Micawber's feelings would never allow him to dispose of them; and Clickett”—this was the girl from the workhouse—“being of a vulgar mind, would take painful liberties if so much confidence was reposed in her.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The ale-drinking, the rude good-fellowship, the heartiness, the laughter at discomforts, the craving to see the fight—all these may be set down as vulgar and trivial by those to whom they are distasteful; but to me, listening to the far-off and uncertain echoes of our distant past, they seem to have been the very bones upon which much that is most solid and virile in this ancient race was moulded.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Just as they always do—very vulgar.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Had there been women in the house, I should have suspected a mere vulgar intrigue.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The book treats of the weakness of human kind, and is in little esteem, except among the women and the vulgar.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
I was very unwise to let you go among people of whom I know so little, kind, I dare say, but worldly, ill-bred, and full of these vulgar ideas about young people.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
You would have compressed me into a two-by- four pigeonhole of life, where all life's values are unreal, and false, and vulgar.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
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