Adjective

(en-adj)

(US, slang) Disgusting.

Coarse, rude, vulgar, obscene, or impure.

* 1874 : Dodsley et al., A Select Collection of Old English Plays

But man to know God is a difficulty, except by a mean he himself inure, which is to know God’s creatures that be: at first them that be of the grossest nature, and then [...] them that be more pure.

* , chapter=12

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross . Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech. In the present connexion—or rather as a transition from the subject that started their conversation—such talk had been distressingly out of place.}}

Great, large, bulky, or fat.

* 2013 , (Hilary Mantel), ‘Royal Bodies’, London Review of Books , 35.IV:

He collected a number of injuries that stopped him jousting, and then in middle age became stout, eventually gross .

Great, serious, flagrant, or shameful.

The whole amount; entire; total before any deductions.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Boundary problems , passage=Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.}}

Not sensitive in perception or feeling; dull; witless.

* Milton

Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear.

Adjective

(en adjective)

(obsolete) Undisciplined, unruly; not able to be controlled.

* 1605 , William Shakespeare, King Lear , IV.1:

As Flies to wanton Boyes are we to th' Gods, / They kill us for their sport.

Lewd, immoral; sexually open, unchaste.

* 1749 , Henry Fielding, Tom Jones :

if wenches will hang out lures for fellows, it is no matter what they suffer: I detest such creatures; and it would be much better for them that their faces had been seamed with the smallpox: but I must confess I never saw any of this wanton behaviour in poor Jenny [...].

* 1874 , Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd :

I know I ought never to have dreamt of sending that valentine—forgive me, sir—it was a wanton thing which no woman with any self-respect should have done.

* 1946 , (Bertrand Russell), History of Western Philosophy , I.21:

People should not marry too young, because, if they do, the children will be weak and female, the wives will become wanton , and the husbands stunted in their growth.

(obsolete) Playful, sportive; being merry or carefree (often used figuratively).

* 1776 , Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , vol. 1:

The grave simplicity of the philosopher was ill calculated to engage her wanton levity, of to fix that unbounded passion for variety, which often discovered personal merit in the meanest of mankind.

(obsolete) Self-indulgent, fond of excess; luxurious.

* 1776 , Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations , Book I:

the market price will rise more or less above the natural price, according as either the greatness of the deficiency, or the wealth and wanton luxury of the competitors, happen to animate more or less the eagerness of the competition.

Capricious, reckless of morality, justice etc.; acting without regard for the law or the well-being of others; gratuitous.

* 1811 , Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility :

Edward himself, now thoroughly enlightened on her character, had no scruple in believing her capable of the utmost meanness of wanton ill-nature.

* 2009 , Ben White, The Guardian , 10 Aug 2009:

these developments in Gaza are a consequence of the state of siege that the tiny territory has been under – a society that has been fenced-in, starved, and seen its very fabric torn apart by unemployment and wanton military destruction.

(obsolete) Extravagant, unrestrained; excessive (of speech or thought).

* 1876 , John Ruskin, Letters , 19 Jan 1876:

But do not think it argues change of temper since I wrote the Frère review, or a wanton praise of one man and blame of another.