Pronunciation: ob·scen·i·ty
Definition:
1. indecency: offensiveness to conventional standards of decency, especially as a result of sexual explicitness
2. obscene expression: a word, phrase, or statement that is offensive, especially because of being sexually explicit
3. something obscene: something that is disgusting and morally offensive
4. The trait of behaving in an obscene manner
5. An offensive or indecent word or phrase
6.An obscene act
Synonyms:
Indecency,sexuality,lustfullness,Immodesty,Coaseness,Immorality,corruption,shamefullness
Antonyms:
Decency,purity,pureness,uprightness,morality,modesty,honour,virtuousness,innocence
Visual Thesaurus:
Sentence:
1. Hari lal gets 15 Months in Prison for Obscenity Charge
2.Citizen's Guide to U.S. Federal Child Exploitation and Obscenity Laws
3.They weren't trying to filter obscenities, but JavaScript webmail exploits.
Word History:
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Notes:
Link to search this word in various Dictionary:
- obscenity : Compact Oxford English Dictionary [home, info]
- obscenity : Encarta® World English Dictionary, North American Edition [home, info]
- obscenity : Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, 11th Edition [home, info]
- obscenity : Cambridge International Dictionary of English [home, info]
- Obscenity : Wiktionary [home, info]
- obscenity : Webster's New World College Dictionary, 4th Ed. [home, info]
- obscenity : The Wordsmyth English Dictionary-Thesaurus [home, info]
- obscenity : The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language [home, info]
- obscenity : Infoplease Dictionary [home, info]
- obscenity : Dictionary.com [home, info]
- obscenity : UltraLingua English Dictionary [home, info]
- obscenity : Cambridge Dictionary of American English [home, info]
- Obscenity : Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia [home, info]
- Obscenity : Online Plain Text English Dictionary [home, info]
- obscenity : Webster's Revised Unabridged, 1913 Edition [home, info]
- obscenity : Rhymezone [home, info]
- obscenity : AllWords.com Multi-Lingual Dictionary [home, info]
- obscenity : Webster's 1828 Dictionary [home, info]
- obscenity : Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition [home, info]
- obscenity : The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy [home, info]
- Obscenity : 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica [home, info]
- obscenity : Free Dictionary [home, info]
- obscenity : WordNet 1.7 Vocabulary Helper [home, info]
- obscenity : LookWAYup Translating Dictionary/Thesaurus [home, info]
- obscenity : Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition (Encyclopedia.com) [home, info]
- obscenity : Dictionary/thesaurus [home, info]
Related Words:
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Immodesty: im·mod·est [adjective]
1. boastful: boasting, or tending to boast a great deal
2. indecent: likely to embarrass, offend, or shock people, especially because of open references to sexual matters or exposure of parts of the body that are normally covered
3. Having or showing an exaggerated opinion of your importance, ability, etc
4. Offending against sexual mores in conduct or appearance
Sentence:
1. One main way to be conspicuous is indeed to under-dress or present oneself as an object of lust. But wearing clothes that are too fancy, too expensive, that make one stand-out, which draw attention to oneself in a given context...is also immodest.
2.
In fact, the whole two articles mention the lust aspect only once, but the excess/immoderation aspect many times. Paying too much care to what one wears is immodesty as much as not paying enough. I think some Catholics' obsession with "modesty" in clothing and "dressing up" for Church...can therefore ironically become immodest in itself.
Of course, if it's a choice between being an occasion of lust, or standing out in a crowd because you wont wear a mini-skirt even though everyone else is...then of course, choose to cover-up. True witness is different than flaunting.
But when it comes to "male modesty"...wearing a fancy suit-and-tie to church when everyone else is wearing khakis and a polo, or whatever, is just as "immodest" as tight-jeans and a wife-beater. Dressing too fancy, as if to make a statement or draw attention to oneself, is just as immodest.
Modesty means inconspicuousness, humility, and simplicity. The emphasis was never traditionally just on the lust/scandal aspect, but much more on the showy pride/excessive adornment aspect.
Immodesty is the sin of the Pharisee praying loudly in public as much as it is of the prostitute. It is just as immodest to over-dress or to make an attention-getting statement through excess delibrate-ness in ones clothing as it is to under-dress. It is the sin of the dandy as much as it is the sin of the slut.
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Modesty: mod·es·ty [móddəstee] [noun]
1. humility: unwillingness to draw attention to your own achievements or abilities
2. sexual reserve: reserve about nudity or sexual matters, especially a preference for clothes that keep much of the body covered
3. shyness: lack of confidence when speaking to others or stating opinions, and the tendency to be uneasy or embarrassed in company
4. simplicity: lack of grandeur or ostentation
5. moderation: moderation in size, scale, or extent
Sentence:
1. Modesty in a woman is the sign that Jesus Christ dwells in her heart. It is a sweet perfume of edification which she is called upon to diffuse.
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Boast: boast [bōst] [verb]
1. speak proudly about possessions or accomplishments: to praise yourself, or speak arrogantly about things you possess or have achieved
2 .possess something desirable: to possess something, especially something that is very desirable
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Exaggerate:ex·ag·ger·ate [ig zájjə ràyt]
1. Overstate something: to state that something is better, worse, larger, more common, or more important than is true or usual
2. Make more noticeable: to make something appear more noticeable or prominent than is usual or desirable
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Conspicuous: [adjective]
1. extravagant spending to impress others: spending large quantities of money, often extravagantly, to impress others
2. noticeably, obviously, clearly, evidently, visibly
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Praise:[noun]
1. Admiration, commendation, approval, acclaim, tribute, applause, compliment, recommendation
2. Worship, honor, adoration, devotion, thanks, glory, celebration, blessing
Praise:[verb]
1. admire, commend, extol, honor, compliment, eulogize (formal), congratulate, pay tribute to, go into raptures over, applaud, acclaim, hail
2. glorify, honor, laud, worship, adore, exalt (formal), magnify (formal), bless, celebrate, extol
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Salacity:
or salacious [adjective]
1. with sexual content: intended to titillate or arouse people sexually, usually by having an explicit erotic content
2. explicitly sexual: having or showing explicit or crude sexual desire or interest
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Bawdiness: [noun]
1. The trait of behaving in an obscene manner
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lewdness
1. indecent: showing an inordinate interest in sex or sexual excitement (disapproving)
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Read it:
Goodness should not be invisible. It should not be colorless. On the other hand, it should not dazzle or overpower. It should compel, not impel; attract, not attack.
Modesty is the virtue that presents goodness in its proper color: one of elegance rather than affluence, economy rather than extravagance, naturalness rather than ostentation. “What a power has white simplicity,” as Keats has aptly remarked. Modesty is the virtue that allows one to focus on what is good without being distracted by irrelevant superficialities.
Not for public consumption
The modest person is content with living well and performing good deeds without fanfare. For him, life is essential, rewards are superfluous. He believes that nature opens to a wider world, whereas ornamentation stifles. He is always averse to gilding the lily. He is confident without being demure, unpretentious without being self-defeating. He lets his actions and words speak for themselves.
Modesty is, as it were, the body’s conscience. The modest person is not interested in displaying his talents and attainments for people to admire. He even shuns making himself the subject of conversation. He is more eager to know what he needs to know than to parade what he already knows. He has a healthy sense of himself as he is and is less concerned about how others view him.
Image is everything?
Modesty seems out of step with the modern world. As a rule, people are most eager to impress others by recourse to no end of gimmicks. Those who work in the advertising or cosmetic industries regard modesty as a self-imposed handicap. If “nice guys finish last,” people of modesty do not even enter the race. Hollywood, or “Tinsel Town,” as it is appropriately called, is the glamour capital of the world, its chief export being the very antithesis of modesty. It champions style over substance, image over essence.
Despite the arrogance and the artificiality of the modern world, modesty retains an unmatched power. It remains a diamond in the midst of zircons. “In the modesty of fearful duty,” wrote Shakespeare, “I read as much as from the rattling tongue of saucy and audacious eloquence” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream). When modesty speaks, its unvarnished eloquence presents that which is true, dependable, and genuine. Modesty is concerned with honesty, not deceit. Therefore, it has little patience with flattery and adulation. Nor is it inclined to exaggerate or boast.
The modest person is aware of his limitations and retains the capacity to blush. A person blushes when he is suddenly the object of praise or attention. It catches him off guard at a moment when he is interested in something other than himself. The essence of modesty is self-forgetfulness.
Unwitting celebrity
Emily Dickinson exemplifies the paradox that modesty, which is unconcerned about stature and reputation, can actually enlarge them. When she was 32, she sent four of her poems to The Atlantic Monthly. The magazine’s rejection of them led her to believe that the public was not interested in her poetry. This belief remained with her throughout the rest of her life, and she never submitted any other works for publication. Although she wrote some 1,775 poems over the course of her life, only seven of them were published — all anonymously, and most of them surreptitiously by friends who wanted to see them in print.
“Fame is a fickle thing,” she wrote. “Men eat of it and die.” As she stated in a letter to a literary critic whom she admired, “My barefoot rank is better.” Her own modest world was broad enough to fill her heart: “A modest lot . . . is plenty! Is enough!” It was her destiny: “I meant to have modest needs, such as content and heaven.” She did not require much to be transported from one realm to another. A book was sufficient — "How frugal is the chariot that bears the human soul.”
A theologian by the name of Nathaniel Emmons, an American contemporary of Dickinson, may have written the perfect summation of her triumphant modesty when he said: “Make no display of your talents or attainments; for everyone will clearly see, admire, and acknowledge them, so long as you cover them with the beautiful veil of modesty.”
One such admirer was the head of a Catholic religious order who confessed: “I bless God for Emily — some of her writings have had a more profound influence on my life than anything else that anyone has ever written.” The general consensus recognizes her as one of America’s greatest poets, and the greatest of all her women poets. Moreover, she touched people who ordinarily do not care much for poetry. As one critic put it, she is supremely the poet of those who “never read poetry.”
Depth of character
One of the most basic and vexing problems in moral education is how to make virtue more attractive than vice. In this regard, modesty plays a key role. Modesty is inherently attractive because it invites one to examine the quiet depth of what is there. Display is not as attractive as it is conspicuous. But what is merely conspicuous is often shallow. It is only natural for people to lift up the modest and be turned away by the proud.
The modesty of the following lines from Dickinson provides a good illustration of the singularly attractive power of modesty:
This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me, —
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!
Related sites:
www.roopsoft.com
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0283.html
www.words.roopsoft.com
