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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

obscene.

Offensive to standards of decency or morality.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/əbˈsiːn/Received-Pronunciation/əbˈsin/Canada, General-American/əbˈsiːn/Australia, New-Zealand

  1. Offensive to standards of decency or morality.

  2. Lewd or lustful.

  3. Disgusting or repulsive.

  4. Beyond all reason; excessive.

    broadly

  5. Liable to corrupt or deprave.

    UK
Where this word comes from

From Middle French obscene (modern French obscène (“indecent, obscene”)), and from its etymon Latin obscēnus, obscaenus (“inauspicious; ominous; disgusting, filthy; offensive, repulsive; indecent, lewd, obscene”). The further etymology is uncertain, but may be from ob- (prefix meaning ‘towards’) + caenum (“dirt, filth; mire, mud”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱweyn- (“to make dirty, soil; filth; mud”)) or scaevus (“left, on the left side; clumsy; (figurative) unlucky”) (from Proto-Indo-European *skeh₂iwo-). If from caenum, the unexpected extra -s- may be from a variant form of the original PIE root; a similar -s- exists in ex-.

verb/əbˈsiːn/Received-Pronunciation/əbˈsin/Canada, General-American/əbˈsiːn/Australia, New-Zealand

  1. To act or speak in an obscene manner; to offend.

    ambitransitive · rare
Where this word comes from

From Middle French obscene (modern French obscène (“indecent, obscene”)), and from its etymon Latin obscēnus, obscaenus (“inauspicious; ominous; disgusting, filthy; offensive, repulsive; indecent, lewd, obscene”). The further etymology is uncertain, but may be from ob- (prefix meaning ‘towards’) + caenum (“dirt, filth; mire, mud”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱweyn- (“to make dirty, soil; filth; mud”)) or scaevus (“left, on the left side; clumsy; (figurative) unlucky”) (from Proto-Indo-European *skeh₂iwo-). If from caenum, the unexpected extra -s- may be from a variant form of the original PIE root; a similar -s- exists in ex-.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.