Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Crude; unrefined.
- adjective Awkward or clumsy; ungraceful.
- adjective Archaic Foreign; unfamiliar.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Not known.
- Not commonly known; not familiar; strange; foreign.
- Strange and suspicious; uncanny; such as to arouse suspicion, dread, fear, or alarm.
- Strange and awkward; characterized by awkwardness, clumsiness, or oddity: now the usual meaning: as, uncouth manners or behavior.
- Not knowing; ignorant.
- Synonyms . Ungainly, Bungling, etc. See
awkward .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective obsolete Unknown.
- adjective obsolete Uncommon; rare; exquisite; elegant.
- adjective Unfamiliar; strange; hence, mysterious; dreadful; also, odd; awkward; boorish.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective archaic
Unfamiliar ,strange ,foreign . - adjective
Clumsy ,awkward . - adjective
Unrefined ,crude .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective lacking refinement or cultivation or taste
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
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Examples
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Well, you said you wanted to appear uncouth, and part of being uncouth is being like a rube, or 'stupid'.
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What’s uncouth is that pell-mell deployment of punctuation, Paul.
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Poland; as a principle, we hated Napoleon, though he had neither act nor part in the doings of the democrats; and the sea-songs of Dibdin, which our youth _now_ would call uncouth and ungraceful rhymes, were key-notes to public feeling; the English of that time were thoroughly
International Weekly Miscellany - Volume 1, No. 7, August 12, 1850 Various
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And that latter saying is true, though it must be remembered that Hallam wrote in the period when no English was recognized by literary people except that of the upper level, when they did not know that these so-called uncouth phrases were to return to common use.
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Infidels must not be allowed to coin uncouth meanings for words, different from the known usage of the English tongue, for which Webster is undeniable authority.
Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity Robert Patterson 1857
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He, being every day alarmed at the prospect of a successor, addressed himself to the task of conciliating Valens, who was of a rustic and rather simple character, by tickling him with all kinds of disguised flattery and caresses, calling his uncouth language and rude expressions "flowers of Ciceronian eloquence."
The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus During the Reigns of the Emperors Constantius, Julian, Jovianus, Valentinian, and Valens Ammianus Marcellinus 1851
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I am not without regard for the Merriam-Webster dictionary, but my advice to those who do not want to be regarded as anything from uneducated to uncouth is to stick with the unadorned
CJR 2008
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Build on facts, not some silly argument about who's "uncouth".
"The trouble with Sanjay Gupta," says Paul Krugman, is seen in the way he "mugged" Michael Moore. Ann Althouse 2009
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Possibly some of us have been doing independent research into the state of health care financing and US policy since the first Bush was in office, and have been able to draw our own conclusions about Moore's information not based on his appearance or "uncouth" behavior?
"The trouble with Sanjay Gupta," says Paul Krugman, is seen in the way he "mugged" Michael Moore. Ann Althouse 2009
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How "uncouth", hey? sometimes I even get a hotdog.
withkerth Diary Entry withkerth 2004
brtom commented on the word uncouth
"Not stiff with prudence, nor uncouthly wild ..."
Sheridan, School for Scandal
January 2, 2008
Prolagus commented on the word uncouth
So, uncouth means uncouth. Thank you, weirdnet.
July 7, 2008
bilby commented on the word uncouth
WeirdNET's cheating, he's been using a dictionary.
July 7, 2008