Vulgar
adj, noun ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A common, ordinary person. derogatory, historical
"Popular antiquarian writings […] frequently focused on the regional vulgars' superstitious beliefs regarding the dead and their ongoing presence—such as popular funeral rites or the vulgars' fear of church yards."
- 2 The common people. collective
- 3 The language of a people, especially the commoners.
"Therefore you Clowne, abandon: which is in the vulgar, leaue the societie: which in the boorish, is companie, of this female: which in the common, is woman: which together, is, abandon the society of this Female, […]"
- 1 Debased; uncouth; distasteful; obscene.
"vulgar language"
- 2 Having to do with ordinary, common people. derogatory, historical
"Near-synonyms: vulgate; vulgarized"
- 3 Common, usual; of the typical kind. especially
"vulgar bush brown (Bicyclus vulgaris)"
- 4 Being a vulgar fraction.
"A fraction is vulgar if it has one integer divided by another integer, as long as the integer that's doing the dividing isn't equal to zero."
- 1 conspicuously and tastelessly indecent wordnet
- 2 being or characteristic of or appropriate to everyday language wordnet
- 3 of or associated with the great masses of people wordnet
- 4 lacking refinement or cultivation or taste wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"He's misunderstood because of his vulgar language."
Etymology
From Middle English vulgare, from Latin vulgāris, from volgus, vulgus (“mob; common folk”), from Proto-Indo-European *wl̥k-. Compare Welsh gwala (“plenty, sufficiency”), Ancient Greek ἁλία (halía, “assembly”), εἰλέω (eiléō, “to compress”), Old Church Slavonic великъ (velikŭ, “great”).
Related phrases
More for "vulgar"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.