bawdry
Americannoun
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Archaic. lewdness; obscenity; bawdiness.
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Obsolete.
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the business of a prostitute.
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illicit intercourse; fornication.
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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.
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
The DAE's weakness in unprinted language may be connected with a reluctance to include unprintable language, for the great U.S. contributions to invective and bawdry are gravely slighted.
From Time Magazine Archive
He can achieve piercing moments of self-revelation, only to resort to vaudevillian bits of bawdry or sink into bathos.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
Indeed, it is a Puritan lie, though it seems to possess the vivaciousness of its class, that the romances are distinguished by "bold bawdry."
From The English Novel by Saintsbury, George
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.
