Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or quality of being coarse, in any sense.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality or state of being coarse; roughness; inelegance; vulgarity; grossness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The property of being coarse, roughness or primitiveness, unrefined or unpolished.
  • noun The quality or state of being coarse; as, coarseness of food, texture, manners, or language.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the quality of lacking taste and refinement
  • noun looseness or roughness in texture (as of cloth)
  • noun the quality of being composed of relatively large particles
  • noun language or humor that is down-to-earth

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

coarse + -ness

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Examples

  • They were pedantic disciples who united with all the affectations of the Italian style a certain German coarseness, and the outcome was a bastard style inferior to the earlier schools -- childish, stiff, and crude in color, with no sense of light and shade.

    Holland, v. 1 (of 2) Edmondo De Amicis 1877

  • Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and the vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though she had been brought up in the most aristocratic circles.

    War and Peace 2003

  • The great reproach always brought against Rabelais is not the want of reserve of his language merely, but his occasional studied coarseness, which is enough to spoil his whole work, and which lowers its value.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • The great reproach always brought against Rabelais is not the want of reserve of his language merely, but his occasional studied coarseness, which is enough to spoil his whole work, and which lowers its value.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • In proportion as the cultivation of the land was the more unconditionally the foundation of the Egyptian state, the idea of coarseness and barbarism was united with the idea of

    Commentary on Genesis - Volume 2 1509-1564 1996

  • The great point to be emphasised at such an initiation is this: that people, especially refined people, are not to judge of Dickens by what they would call the coarseness or commonplaceness of his subject.

    Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens 1905

  • I should like to add that what is called the coarseness of the eighteenth-century novel and romance is much more healthful than the nasty brutality of a school of our novelists -- who make up for their lack of talent and of wide experience by trying to excite animal instincts.

    Confessions of a Book-Lover Maurice Francis Egan 1888

  • Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and the vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though she had been brought up in the most aristocratic circles.

    War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869

  • The great reproach always brought against Rabelais is not the want of reserve of his language merely, but his occasional studied coarseness, which is enough to spoil his whole work, and which lowers its value.

    Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 1 Fran��ois Rabelais 1518

  • One who is narcissistically sensitive is easily offended by the "coarseness" of others, seeks to make his environment change to align with the contours of his needs, and gets angry or offended when this does not happen.

    The Allure of Narcissistic Spirituality Rabbi Alan Lurie 2011

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