crass
Americanadjective
-
without refinement, delicacy, or sensitivity; gross; obtuse; stupid.
crass commercialism; a crass misrepresentation of the facts.
- Synonyms:
- indelicate, oafish, boorish, dull
-
Archaic. thick; coarse.
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of crass
First recorded in 1535–45; from Middle French, from Latin crassus “fat, thick”
Explanation
A crass comment is very stupid and shows that the speaker doesn't care about other people's feelings. In today's day and age, you don't have to wear black to a funeral, but to show up in clown pants is simply crass. The source of this adjective is Latin crassus, "thick, dense, fat." A similar development of meaning can be seen in English dense in the sense of "stupid, slow to understand," from Latin densus, "thick, dense," and in English thick, which can also be used to mean "stupid."
Vocabulary lists containing crass
Flying Lessons & Other Stories
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The Cuckoo's Calling
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The Sound and the Fury
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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.
See Examples For:
"There might have been a few crass comments that I've said," he added.
From BBC ● Jun. 2, 2026
Despite or because of the crass, disrespectful language, conservative influencers are raving about the video as a game-changer.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 6, 2026
To many of the families of the dead, returning to Mystic is crass bordering on disrespectful.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 18, 2026
If Hulu’s “Shoresy” is the poster child for successfully balancing raunch and heart, “Ted” is on the opposite end — crass and lazy.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 27, 2026
The more crass the attraction, the more I was drawn to it.
From "Educated" by Tara Westover
The moral geography of New England tends to follow its lines of altitude: virtue is sought in the hills; a crasser commerce prevails near the sea.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 17, 2016
Critics within the union see the objective in somewhat crasser terms.
From New York Times ● Oct. 17, 2015
It’s not just that communication has become more frequent, it’s become much crasser and coarser.
From Forbes ● Sep. 26, 2012
Long is a book crasser who leaves books in public places to be picked up and read by others who, hopefully, will do the same.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 21, 2011
The place is duller, the tone lower, the whole social atmosphere crasser and heavier than I could have believed possible in a town where the intelligence to make money exists so palpably.
From Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, Vol. II by Downey, Edmund
And that was just at the crassest level.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 24, 2021
Now they’re his crassest way to hold on to it.
From New York Times ● Jun. 28, 2018
Under the act’s crassest feature, the commissioner who returned an alleged runaway to his or her captors received a ten-dollar fee, while deciding for liberty only brought five dollars.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018
It lacked the narrative structure, moral fiber, and cathartic transformation that even the crassest feed serials took for granted.
From The Verge ● Dec. 17, 2017
Common-sense truthfulness Tell us, at Christmas, youth's crassest of crass ages.
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 by Burnand, F. C. (Francis Cowley), Sir
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.
