VULGARITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does vulgarity mean? 

• VULGARITY (noun)
  The noun VULGARITY has 1 sense:

1. the quality of lacking taste and refinement

  Familiarity information: VULGARITY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• VULGARITY (noun)

Sense 1

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 ("vulgarity" is a kind of...):

inelegance (the quality of lacking refinement and good taste)

Derivation:

vulgar (conspicuously and tastelessly indecent)

vulgar (lacking refinement or cultivation or taste)

 Context examples 

As for me, I want the best a man's got in him, call it shop vulgarity or anything you please.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

How can she find any appellation for them, deep enough in familiar vulgarity?

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

He must soon give her up, and cease to have the smallest inclination for the match; and yet, though she had been so much wanting his affection to be cured, this was a sort of cure that would be almost as bad as the complaint; and I believe there is scarcely a young lady in the United Kingdoms who would not rather put up with the misfortune of being sought by a clever, agreeable man, than have him driven away by the vulgarity of her nearest relations.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Mrs. Phillips's vulgarity was another, and perhaps a greater, tax on his forbearance; and though Mrs. Phillips, as well as her sister, stood in too much awe of him to speak with the familiarity which Bingley's good humour encouraged, yet, whenever she did speak, she must be vulgar.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Marianne, who had never much toleration for any thing like impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of taste from herself, was at this time particularly ill-disposed, from the state of her spirits, to be pleased with the Miss Steeles, or to encourage their advances; and to the invariable coldness of her behaviour towards them, which checked every endeavour at intimacy on their side, Elinor principally attributed that preference of herself which soon became evident in the manners of both, but especially of Lucy, who missed no opportunity of engaging her in conversation, or of striving to improve their acquaintance by an easy and frank communication of her sentiments.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

It is now expedient to give some description of Mrs. Allen, that the reader may be able to judge in what manner her actions will hereafter tend to promote the general distress of the work, and how she will, probably, contribute to reduce poor Catherine to all the desperate wretchedness of which a last volume is capable—whether by her imprudence, vulgarity, or jealousy—whether by intercepting her letters, ruining her character, or turning her out of doors.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

These opinions he delivered in a few words, in a quiet, low voice; and added, after a pause, in the tone of a man little accustomed to expansive comment, Rather an unusual physiognomy; certainly, not indicative of vulgarity or degradation.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Think, then, what I must have endured in hearing it bandied between the Eltons with all the vulgarity of needless repetition, and all the insolence of imaginary superiority.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Vulgarity—a hearty vulgarity, I'll admit—is the basis of bourgeois refinement and culture.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Susan tried to be useful, where she could only have gone away and cried; and that Susan was useful she could perceive; that things, bad as they were, would have been worse but for such interposition, and that both her mother and Betsey were restrained from some excesses of very offensive indulgence and vulgarity.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)