Uncouth

//ʌnˈkuːθ// adj

adj ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Unfamiliar, strange, foreign. archaic

    "If this uncouth forest yield anything savage, I will either be food for it or bring it for food to thee."

  2. 2
    Clumsy, awkward.
  3. 3
    Unrefined, crude.

    "I don't want to associate with uncouth people."

Adjective
  1. 1
    lacking refinement or cultivation or taste wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
unrefinedabandonedall thumbsanimalawelessawkward

Example

More examples

"There are things I'd like to say but to butt in now would be what they call uncouth."

Etymology

From Middle English uncouth, from Old English uncūþ (“unknown; unfamiliar; strange”), from Proto-West Germanic *unkunþ, from Proto-Germanic *unkunþaz (“unknown”), equivalent to un- + couth. The modern pronunciation does not show /aʊ/, the usual development of the Middle English vowel from the Great Vowel Shift. It is usually explained as a pronunciation taken from Northern English dialects, which did not undergo the diphthongization of the vowel.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.