Learn English – Differences between “vulgar” and “coarse”, “crass”, “crude”, “rough”, “rude”, “unrefined” as applied to language

adjectivesdifferencessynonymsvocabulary

This question specifically covers how these terms are used to describe language, it is a followup to What's the difference between "informal", "colloquial", "slang", and "vulgar"?

In the former question it arose that vulgar has at least two senses, and perhaps three:

  • "of the people" as in Vulgar Latin (not considered to be a productive sense anymore)
  • an antonym to "refined" as used to label words in various dictionaries
  • a synonym for "obscene" or "offensive" – I take this sense to be newer and perhaps regional to America – but it does seem to be replacing sense 2

So my question is how do these other words overlap in meaning with the 2nd and 3rd senses above: "coarse", "crass", "crude", "rough", "rude", "unrefined"?

Best Answer

I looked up each and everyone of their meanings, and they all had meanings of "crude, unrefined", and when I looked up "unrefined" it had the meaning of "crude".

So I looked up "crude", and came up with:

Lacking tact or taste/Lacking concealing elements.

Basically, they all mean the same thing, and that is, just not being tactful, and putting things in an unpleasant way.

In their relation to the third and second senses above, they are all as I said, an antonym of refined, but it does not necessarily mean these words denote "obscenity". They may be offensive, yes, or unpleasant, but "obscenity" includes much worse things like blasphemy, or cursing, or highly derogatory terms, whereas your list of words lean more to being dysphemistic.

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