English Dictionary |
COARSENESS
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Dictionary entry overview: What does coarseness mean?
• COARSENESS (noun)
The noun COARSENESS has 4 senses:
1. language or humor that is down-to-earth
2. the quality of being composed of relatively large particles
3. looseness or roughness in texture (as of cloth)
4. the quality of lacking taste and refinement
Familiarity information: COARSENESS used as a noun is uncommon.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
Language or humor that is down-to-earth
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Synonyms:
coarseness; saltiness
Context example:
self-parody and saltiness riddled their core genre
Hypernyms ("coarseness" is a kind of...):
expressive style; style (a way of expressing something (in language or art or music etc.) that is characteristic of a particular person or group of people or period)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The quality of being composed of relatively large particles
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Synonyms:
coarseness; graininess; granularity
Hypernyms ("coarseness" is a kind of...):
raggedness; roughness (a texture of a surface or edge that is not smooth but is irregular and uneven)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "coarseness"):
sandiness (a texture resembling that of sand)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Looseness or roughness in texture (as of cloth)
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Synonyms:
coarseness; nubbiness; tweediness
Hypernyms ("coarseness" is a kind of...):
raggedness; roughness (a texture of a surface or edge that is not smooth but is irregular and uneven)
Derivation:
coarse (of textures that are rough to the touch or substances consisting of relatively large particles)
Sense 4
Meaning:
The quality of lacking taste and refinement
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Synonyms:
coarseness; commonness; grossness; raunch; vulgarism; vulgarity
Hypernyms ("coarseness" is a kind of...):
inelegance (the quality of lacking refinement and good taste)
Derivation:
coarse (lacking refinement or cultivation or taste)
Context examples
Coarseness and savagery are the inevitable results.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
He has nothing but roughness and coarseness to offer you in exchange for all that is refined and delicate in you.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
She could not bear a shadow of coarseness.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Elizabeth was shocked to think that, however incapable of such coarseness of expression herself, the coarseness of the sentiment was little other than her own breast had harboured and fancied liberal!
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I heard and saw round me.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
The older a person grows, Harriet, the more important it is that their manners should not be bad; the more glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or awkwardness becomes.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
The fore-feet of the Yahoo differed from my hands in nothing else but the length of the nails, the coarseness and brownness of the palms, and the hairiness on the backs.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Her manners were open, easy, and decided, like one who had no distrust of herself, and no doubts of what to do; without any approach to coarseness, however, or any want of good humour.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Thus earnestly besought, I made no reference to the Doctor for his permission, but, without any other compromise of the truth than a little softening of the coarseness of Uriah Heep, related plainly what had passed in that same room that night.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts—when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break—at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent—I am ever tender and true.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
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