obscene

CEFRC1

/əbˈsiːn/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    adjective

    Offensive because it shows or describes sex inappropriately.

  2. 02

    adjective

    Extra detail

    Disgusting or repulsive.

Examples

  • His obscene remarks will be expunged from the record.

  • One must be respectful when speaking, and not say obscene things.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Also pronounced

  • /əbˈsin/

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

  1. Lewd or lustful.

  2. Offensive to standards of decency or morality.

  3. Beyond all reason; excessive.

More examples

In context

  • Neither do wee pleaſe them with their owne crimes, or obſcæne ſpectacles: whereas they celebrate both the guilt that there gods incurred who were men, and the fayned pleaſures of ſuch of them as were flat deuills.

  • All masturbation is obscene, for [Roger] Scruton, also because it "involves a concentration on the body and its curious pleasures" [...].

  • The reminder of who we were / made the canned laughter obscene. / Disgusted, mother returned to the kitchen, / her thoughts private.

Synonyms

Antonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The comedian's blank jokes, full of crude language, offended many audience members.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

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-). If from caenum, the unexpected extra -s- may be from a variant form of the original PIE root; a similar -s- exists in ex-.