bawdry
Americannoun
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Archaic. lewdness; obscenity; bawdiness.
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Obsolete.
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the business of a prostitute.
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illicit intercourse; fornication.
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noun
Etymology
Origin of bawdry
First recorded in 1350–1400, bawdry is from the Middle English word bawdery. See bawd, -ery
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In soliloquy and song, in bantering bawdry and scalp-tingling rhetoric, in the kingliest English and in tender or rough translation, they speak to man from mankind's heart.
From Time Magazine Archive
In Britain, Monty Python's Flying Circus tossed music-hall bawdry into a Dada format, and at home National Lampoon updated sick humor with a stinging Wasp edge.
From Time Magazine Archive
He can achieve piercing moments of self-revelation, only to resort to vaudevillian bits of bawdry or sink into bathos.
From Time Magazine Archive
The show evolves in play-within-a-play fashion from an opening square dance, and the book, lyrics, music and choreography mesh delightfully to create the mood of innocent bawdry and rustic high jinks.
From Time Magazine Archive
Yet it were not difficult to prove that in many places he has perverted my meaning by his glosses, and interpreted my words into blasphemy and bawdry, of which they were not guilty.
From Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations by Eliot, Charles William
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
