Link Centre Dictionary

obscene

obs·cene

UK/əbˈsiːn/ US/əbˈsin/ fairly common uk

adjective

1.

designed to incite to indecency or lust

  • “the dance often becomes flagrantly obscene” Margaret Mead
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2.

offensive to the mind

  • “an abhorrent deed”
  • “the obscene massacre at Wounded Knee”
  • “morally repugnant customs”
  • “repulsive behavior”
  • “the most repulsive character in recent novels”
Synonyms
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3.

suggestive of or tending to moral looseness

  • “lewd whisperings of a dirty old man”
  • “an indecent gesture”
  • “obscene telephone calls”
  • “salacious limericks”
Synonyms
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Origin

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-.

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Word family

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.