Vulgarity is the quality of being common, coarse, or unrefined. This judgement may refer to language, visual art, social class, or social climbers. John Bayley claims the term can never be

self-referential Self-reference is a concept that involves referring to oneself or one's own attributes, characteristics, or actions. It can occur in language, logic, mathematics, philosophy, and other fields. In natural language, natural or formal languages, ...

, because to be aware of vulgarity is to display a degree of

sophistication Sophistication refers to the qualities of refinement, good taste, and wisdom. By contrast, its original use was as a pejorative, derived from sophist, and included the idea of Mixture, admixture or adulteration. Today, as researched by Faye Hammi ...

which thereby elevates the subject above the vulgar.

Evolution of the term

From the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, "vulgar" simply described the common language or vernacular of a country. From the mid-seventeenth century onward, it began to take on a

pejorative A pejorative word, phrase, slur, or derogatory term is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hosti ...

aspect: "having a common and offensively mean character, coarsely commonplace; lacking in refinement or good taste; uncultured; ill bred". In the Victorian age, vulgarity broadly described many activities, such as wearing ostentatious clothing. In a George Eliot novel, one character could be vulgar for talking about money, a second because he criticizes the first for doing so, and a third for being fooled by the excessive refinement of the second. The effort to avoid vulgar phrasing could leave characters at a loss for words. In George Meredith's '' Beauchamp's Career'', an heiress does not wish to make the commonplace statement that she is "engaged", nor "betrothed", "affianced", or "plighted". Though such words are not vulgarity in the vulgar sense, they nonetheless could stigmatize the user as a member of a socially inferior class. Even favored euphemisms such as ''

toilet A toilet is a piece of sanitary hardware that collects human waste (urine and feces) and sometimes toilet paper, usually for disposal. Flush toilets use water, while dry or non-flush toilets do not. They can be designed for a sitting p ...

'' eventually become stigmatized like the words they replace (the so-called euphemism treadmill), and currently favored words serve as a sort of "

cultural capital In the field of sociology, cultural capital comprises the social assets of a person (education, intellect, style of speech, style of dress, social capital, etc.) that promote social mobility in a stratified society. Cultural capital functions as ...

Vulgar humor

Language

Vulgarity, in the sense of vulgar speech, can refer to language which is offensive or obscene. The word most associated with the verbal form of vulgarity is "cursing." However, there are many subsections of vulgar words. American psychologist Timothy Jay classifies "dirty words" because it "allows people interested in language to define the different types of reference or meaning that dirty words employ. One can see that what is considered taboo or obscene revolves around a few dimensions of human experience that there is a logic behind dirty word usage." One of the most commonly used vulgar terms in the English language is ''

fuck ''Fuck'' () is profanity in the English language that often refers to the act of sexual intercourse, but is also commonly used as an intensifier or to convey disdain. While its origin is obscure, it is usually considered to be first attested ...

''.Blomquist, Robert F. "The F-Word: A Jurisprudential Taxonomy of American Morals (In a Nutshell)." Santa Clara L. Rev. 40 (1999): 65.

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