bawdry

bawdry

English

Alternative forms

• baw'ry (obsolete)

Noun

bawdry (countable and uncountable, plural bawdries)

1. The practice of procuring women for the gratification of lust.
2. Illicit intercourse; fornication.
3. Obscenity; filthy, unchaste language.
   • 1749, Henry Fielding, chapter IV, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume III, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], OCLC 928184292, book VII, page 26:

     [T]he Converſation (if it may be called ſo) was ſeldom ſuch as could entertain a Lady. It conſiſted chiefly of Hollowing, Singing, Relations of ſporting Adventures, B—d—y, and Abuſe of Women and of the Government.

   • 1901, [George] Bernard Shaw, “Three Plays for Puritans”, in Three Plays for Puritans: The Devil’s Disciple, Cæsar and Cleopatra, & Captain Brassbound’s Conversion, London: Grant Richards, […], OCLC 122594195, page xxix:

     Let realism have its demonstration, comedy its criticism, or even bawdry its horselaugh at the expense of sexual infatuation, if it must; but to ask us to subject our souls to its ruinous glamour, to worship it, deify it, and imply that it alone makes our life worth living, is nothing but folly gone mad erotically—a thing compared to which Falstaff's unbeglamored drinking and drabbing is respectable and rightminded.

References

• bawdry in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913