UNCOUTH

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does uncouth mean? 

• UNCOUTH (adjective)
  The adjective UNCOUTH has 1 sense:

1. lacking refinement or cultivation or taste

  Familiarity information: UNCOUTH used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNCOUTH (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Lacking refinement or cultivation or taste

Synonyms:

coarse; common; rough-cut; uncouth; vulgar

Context example:

the vulgar display of the newly rich

Similar:

unrefined ((used of persons and their behavior) not refined; uncouth)

Derivation:

uncouthness (inelegance by virtue of being an uncouth boor)

 Context examples 

He has not the bel air, the tournure—in our uncouth English we have no word for it.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into silence again.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

She went away weeping audibly, and he felt a pang of sorrow shoot through him at sight of her heavy body and uncouth gait.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

He looked keenly at Sir Nigel as he approached, and then, plunging his hand under his breastplate, he stepped up to him with a rough, uncouth bow to the lady.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a little weazened man who spat broken English and many strange and uncouth exclamations which Buck could not understand.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Toller, for that is his name, is a rough, uncouth man, with grizzled hair and whiskers, and a perpetual smell of drink.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

With a cry John seized the branch of a tree, whipped the crutch out of his armpit, and sent that uncouth missile hurtling through the air.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I shall call hills steep, which ought to be bold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and rugged; and distant objects out of sight, which ought only to be indistinct through the soft medium of a hazy atmosphere.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

They gazed awhile in admiration at my strange uncouth dress; my coat made of skins, my wooden-soled shoes, and my furred stockings; whence, however, they concluded, I was not a native of the place, who all go naked.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Heavily built and massive, there was a suggestion of uncouth physical inertia in the figure, but above this unwieldy frame there was perched a head so masterful in its brow, so alert in its steel-grey, deep-set eyes, so firm in its lips, and so subtle in its play of expression, that after the first glance one forgot the gross body and remembered only the dominant mind.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)