coarseness

noun

Etymology: Etymology tree English coarse Proto-Germanic *-inōną Proto-Indo-European *-dyé- Proto-Germanic *-atjaną Proto-Indo-European *-tus Proto-Germanic *-þuz Proto-Germanic *-assuz Proto-Germanic *-inassuz Proto-West Germanic *-nassī Old English -nes Middle English -nesse English -ness English coarseness From coarse + -ness.

1. The property of being coarse, roughness or primitiveness, unrefined or unpolished.
2. The quality or state of being coarse

   “coarseness of food, texture, manners, or language”

   “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 connection—[…]—such talk had been distressingly out of place.”

3. Something that is coarse.

   “This sketch is rather coarse, but probably it is as little exaggerated as could be expected from Walpole. The society which it illustrates abounded with such coarsenesses. Princesses were not expected to exhibit much propriety—nor Duchesses to be overburthened with delicacy.”

   “Hogarth does not refrain from introducing a sign in his engraving “Noon,” of 1738, showing the Baptist’s head on a charger, with the cynical inscription “Good Eating.” Whether such coarsenesses were actually perpetrated, even under the lax régime of Charles II in England, when frivolity reigned after the fall of Cromwell, it is hard to decide.”