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VULGAR
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Dictionary entry overview: What does vulgar mean?
• VULGAR (adjective)
The adjective VULGAR has 4 senses:
1. lacking refinement or cultivation or taste
2. of or associated with the great masses of people
3. being or characteristic of or appropriate to everyday language
4. conspicuously and tastelessly indecent
Familiarity information: VULGAR used as an adjective is uncommon.
Dictionary entry details
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:
vulgarity (the quality of lacking taste and refinement)
vulgarize (act in a vulgar manner)
vulgarize (debase and make vulgar)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Of or associated with the great masses of people
Synonyms:
common; plebeian; unwashed; vulgar
Context example:
the unwashed masses
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 3
Meaning:
Being or characteristic of or appropriate to everyday language
Synonyms:
common; vernacular; vulgar
Context example:
the technical and vulgar names for an animal species
Similar:
informal (used of spoken and written language)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Conspicuously and tastelessly indecent
Synonyms:
Context example:
full of language so vulgar it should have been edited
Similar:
indecent (offensive to good taste especially in sexual matters)
Derivation:
vulgarity (the quality of lacking taste and refinement)
Context examples
There, not to be vulgar, was distinction, and merit.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
It is not my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either: I mean to have her all to myself.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
It's like a man to propose a bone and vulgar bread and cheese for company.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
The cases which come to light in the papers are, as a rule, bald enough, and vulgar enough.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
To this speech Bingley made no answer; but his sisters gave it their hearty assent, and indulged their mirth for some time at the expense of their dear friend's vulgar relations.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
You belong with the legions of toil, with all that is low, and vulgar, and unbeautiful.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
The furniture and pictures were of the most common and vulgar description, save in the one chamber at the window of which I had seen the strange face.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The learned among them confess the absurdity of this doctrine; but the practice still continues, in compliance to the vulgar.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Mrs. Jennings, Lady Middleton's mother, was a good-humoured, merry, fat, elderly woman, who talked a great deal, seemed very happy, and rather vulgar.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
My tale was not one to announce publicly; its astounding horror would be looked upon as madness by the vulgar.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
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