bawdry
Americannoun
-
Archaic. lewdness; obscenity; bawdiness.
-
Obsolete.
-
the business of a prostitute.
-
illicit intercourse; fornication.
-
noun
Etymology
Origin of bawdry
First recorded in 1350–1400, bawdry is from the Middle English word bawdery. See bawd, -ery
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Psychoanalysis, sociology, literary history, bawdry, biology, whatnot, all chip in to make Auden's poems: Rummaging into his living, the poet fetches The images out that hurt and connect.
From Time Magazine Archive
In soliloquy and song, in bantering bawdry and scalp-tingling rhetoric, in the kingliest English and in tender or rough translation, they speak to man from mankind's heart.
From Time Magazine Archive
It's movie analysis with a serrated edge; film criticism as stand-up bawdry; intellectual improvisation that soars into the highest form of word jazz.
From Time Magazine Archive
Its bawdry is innocent, its humor earthy, its love songs are unselfconsciously sentimental.
From Time Magazine Archive
Physic, or mathematics, Poetry, state, or bawdry, as I told you, She will endure, and never startle; but No word of controversy.
From The Alchemist by Jonson, Ben
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
