ordure

noun

Etymology: From Middle English ordure, ordure, borrowed from Middle French ordure and Anglo-Norman ordure, ordeur(e), ordor(e), ordour from Old French ordure (“dirt, filth, refuse; dung, excrement; moral filth”) (modern French ordure), from ord (“filthy”) + -ure (suffix forming nouns describing the results of actions). Ord is derived from Latin horridus (“dreadful, frightful, horrid”), from horreō (“to stand erect, stand on end; to shiver, tremble; to be afraid of, dread; to be frightful”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰers- (“stiff; surprised”)) + -idus (suffix meaning ‘tending to’).

1. Dung, excrement.

   “But there has none employed my Thoughts of late ſo much, as a very nice inquiſition, or inſpection, into the frequent differences we meet with Human Ordure. The World may ſay, perhaps, I had very little to do, and that ſo ſolemn and ſerious a Preface, ill became ſo foul a Subject; but let what will be ſaid, I can't help communicating my Sentiments, but will endeavour to wrap 'em up in as cleanly a manner, as the dirtineſs of the Theme will admit.”

   “If a Man throws upon a Woman's body, from the Navel upwards to beneath the Neck, any Spue, or Urine, or Ordure, or Semen, the Magiſtrate ſhall fine him One Hundred and Twenty Puns of Cowries.”

2. Dirt, filth.

   “For, that the ordure, which continually gathers on the skin, would ſoon ſtop the pores of it, if the ſweat were not furniſht with ſome efficacious diſſolvent to open and pierce them.”

   “The Ears are ſometimes troubled with Ulcers; and an Ulcer often happens by the Fall of a malignant Humour; or elſe it is occaſioned by a Wound, ſome Hurt, or ſome Ordure that is corrupted in the Ear.”

3. Something regarded as contaminating or perverting the morals; obscene material.

   “As my Papers are intended for ſhort Eſſays of Morality,—I ſhall leave to the Authors of Common-Senſe, the full Poſſeſſion of their Puns and Ordures, both now and evermore; [...]”

   “[James] Douglas – who had recently railed against Aldous Huxley’s Antic Hay for its ‘ordure and blasphemy’, summed the book [Aleister Crowley’s Diary of a Drug Fiend (1922)] up as ‘describing the orgies of vice practised by a group of moral degenerates who stimulate their degraded lusts by doses of cocaine and heroin’.”