bawdy
Americanadjective
noun
adjective
noun
Other Word Forms
- bawdily adverb
- bawdiness noun
Etymology
Origin of bawdy
Explanation
Bawdy describes humor that is vulgar or off-color. Things that are bawdy are a little inappropriate, intended to be funny, and definitely not the kind of things you want to say in school. Bawdy jokes are inappropriate, but they're not totally explicit or graphic — a movie with a little bit of bawdy humor might be rated PG-13, rather than R. Still, you probably don't want to recite bawdy poems in front of your fussy Aunt Irma, your clergyperson, or your math teacher. The exact etymology of this word is uncertain, but it is formed from the Middle English noun bawd, meaning "a lewd or licentious person."
Vocabulary lists containing bawdy
Top 50 Wordle Words of 2024
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"Hatred," Vocabulary from the poem
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Copper Sun
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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.
President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal's parent company, its owner and two reporters, over a report claiming Trump wrote a "bawdy" personal note to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.
From BBC • Jul. 18, 2025
And certainly the half-hour show, created by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen and starring the bawdy comedian/cabaret star Bridget Everett as Sam, can be funny as hell.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 8, 2024
The 52-year-old Manhattan, Kansas, native spent decades flying just under the mainstream radar, honing her bawdy cabaret act while waiting tables in New York, including at the still-missed Ruby Foo's.
From Salon • Dec. 8, 2024
Cue a medley of exquisite tomfoolery, featuring bawdy badinage, dubious love-poems, mistaken identity, visual gags, a chaotic play-within-a-play and lots of linguistic whimsy.
From New York Times • May 2, 2024
Common, bawdy people—at a distance—had always amused him.
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
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.
