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Vulgar vs Profanity - What's the difference?

vulgar | profanity |

As an adjective vulgar

is vulgar.

As a noun profanity is

(uncountable) the quality of being profane.

vulgar

English

Adjective

(en-adj)
  • Debased, uncouth, distasteful, obscene.
  • * {{quote-book
  • , year= 1551 , year_published= 1888 , author= , by= , title= A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by the Philological Society. , url= http://books.google.com/books?id=JmpXAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA217 , original= , chapter= , section= Part 1 , isbn= , edition= , publisher= Clarendon Press , location= Oxford , editor= , volume= 1 , page= 217 , passage= Also the rule of false position, with dyuers examples not onely vulgar , but some appertaynyng to the rule of Algeber. }}
  • * The construction worker made a vulgar suggestion to the girls walking down the street.
  • (classical sense) Having to do with ordinary, common people.
  • * Bishop Fell
  • It might be more useful to the English reader to write in our vulgar language.
  • * Bancroft
  • The mechanical process of multiplying books had brought the New Testament in the vulgar tongue within the reach of every class.
  • * 1860 , G. Syffarth, "A Remarkable Seal in Dr. Abbott's Museum at New York", Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis? , age 265
  • Further, the same sacred name in other monuments precedes the vulgar name of King Takellothis , the sixth of the XXII. Dyn., as we have seen.

    Synonyms

    * (obscene) inappropriate, obscene, debased, uncouth, offensive, ignoble, mean, profane * (ordinary) common, ordinary, popular

    Derived terms

    * (obscene) vulgarity * (ordinary) vulgar fraction, vulgate, Vulgate * vulgar fraction

    profanity

    Alternative forms

    * prophanity (qualifier)

    Noun

  • (uncountable) The quality of being profane.
  • (countable) Obscene, lewd or abusive language.
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author= Sam Leith
  • , volume=189, issue=1, page=37, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Where the profound meets the profane , passage=Swearing doesn't just mean what we now understand by "dirty words". It is entwined, in social and linguistic history, with the other sort of swearing: vows and oaths. Consider for a moment the origins of almost any word we have for bad language – "profanity ", "curses", "oaths" and "swearing" itself.}}