bawdy
/ˈbɔːdi
/adjective (bawdier, bawdiest)
Dealing with sexual matters in a comical way; humorously indecent.Brothers and sisters should avoid one another in public and refrain from telling bawdy jokes or making sexual remarks in each other's presence....
- ‘A bawdy broad, witty and intelligent, with a mouth like a sailor,’ is how Wise describes her.
- Interspersing songs with humorous anecdotes in which his bawdy humor and racy wit come into play, audiences never know what's going to happen when Kan Kan takes to the stage.
Synonyms
ribald, indecent, risqué, racy, rude, spicy, suggestive, titillating, naughty, improper, indelicate, indecorous, off colour, earthy, broad, locker-room, Rabelaisian;
pornographic, obscene, vulgar, crude, coarse, gross, lewd, dirty, filthy, smutty, unseemly, salacious, prurient, lascivious, licentious, X-rated, scatological, near the bone, near the knuckle;
erotic, sexy, sexual
informal blue, raunchy, nudge-nudge
euphemistic adult
noun [mass noun]
Humorously indecent talk or writing.His wonderful wit greatly delighted contemporary readers, most of whom were not worried by bawdy, though there were some who thought it inappropriate for a clergyman....
- It will be useful to re-establish first of all that Steele really did think of himself as an innovator, a propagandist for a new comedy, which was to replace Restoration bawdy on stage.
- Theaters reopened to comedy, bawdy, and romance.
Derivatives
bawdily
/ adverb ...- Amanda had suggested bawdily that this might be a decision which she could make well worth his while.
- Douglas Wootton dramatises this bawdily rollicking ditty to perfection, down to the last nudge and wink.
- Helen and Paris enter; she implores Pandarus to sing a song of love, which he later sings bawdily.
bawdiness
/ noun ...- May impropriety and bawdiness grow and flourish and evolve into lusty, heartfelt words to shake the very foundations of those scared by language.
- Pedro Almodovar's homage to women and their complexities is a drama filled with bawdiness, tenderness and raw emotion.
- This verse from his poem ‘Caller Oysters’ shows his bawdiness and irreverence as well as his humour.
Origin
Early 16th century: from bawd + -y1.
Bawdy has gained its sexual overtones, in phrases such as bawdy jokes and bawdy house, from bawd (Late Middle English) ‘a woman in charge of a brothel’, a late Middle English word shortened from the now obsolete bawdstrot, from Old French baudestroyt ‘procuress’ (from baude ‘shameless’).