obscene
Adjective Satellite
- designed to incite to indecency or lust; -Margaret Mead
- "the dance often becomes flagrantly obscene"
- offensive to the mind
- "the obscene massacre at Wounded Knee"
- suggestive of or tending to moral looseness
- "obscene telephone calls"
Adj
- Offensive to standards of decency or morality.
- Lewd or lustful.
- Disgusting or repulsive.
- Beyond all reason; excessive.
- Liable to corrupt or deprave.
Verb
- To act or speak in an obscene manner; to offend.
Adjective
- Offensive to accepted standards of decency; disgusting or repulsive.
Examples
- An obscene score in Words With Friends often leaves opponents speechless.
Origin / Etymology
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 so, the unexpected extra -s- may be from a variant form of the original PIE root; a similar -s- exists in ex-.
Synonyms
abhorrent, detestable, lewd, raunchy, repugnant, repulsive, salacious, adult, bawdy, blue, cheeky, dirty, excessive, extravagant, extreme, filthy, gross, harlot, immoderate, indecent, intemperate, ithyphallic, lavish, mucky, naughty, near the knuckle, nimious, obscene, off-colour, over the top, overmuch, overweening, prodigal, racy, ribald, ribaudred, ribaudrous, risqué, rorty, saucy, shocking, slutlike, sluttish, slutty, smutty, spicy, tartish, tarty, trampy, undue, unmeasured, unreasonable, unrestrained, vulgar, wanton
Scrabble Score: 11
obscene: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordobscene: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
obscene: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary