Word.ws English Dictionary

bawdry

bawdry noun: the practice of procuring women for the gratification of lust.

Noun

bawdry (countable and uncountable, plural bawdries)

  1. The practice of procuring women for the gratification of lust.
  2. Illicit intercourse; fornication.
  3. Obscenity; filthy, unchaste language.
    • [T]he Converſation (if it may be called ſo) was ſeldom ſuch as could entertain a Lady. It conſiſted chiefly of Hollowing, Singing, Relations of ſporting Adventures, B—d—y, and Abuſe of Women and of the Government.1749, Henry Fielding, chapter IV, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume III, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book VII, page 26
    • Let realism have its demonstration, comedy its criticism, or even bawdry its horselaugh at the expense of sexual infatuation, if it must; but to ask us to subject our souls to its ruinous glamour, to worship it, deify it, and imply that it alone makes our life worth living, is nothing but folly...1901, [George] Bernard Shaw, “Three Plays for Puritans”, in Three Plays for Puritans: The Devil’s Disciple, Cæsar and Cleopatra, & Captain Brassbound’s Conversion, London: Grant Richards, […], →OCLC...

Forms of bawdry

pluralbawdries
alternative formbaw'ry

Questions about bawdry

What does bawdry mean?
Bawdry means the practice of procuring women for the gratification of lust.
What part of speech is bawdry?
Bawdry is a noun.
What is the plural of bawdry?
The plural of bawdry is bawdries.

Words near bawdry in the dictionary

  1. bawdrick
  2. bawdricks
  3. bawdrics
  4. bawdries
  5. bawdrons
  6. bawdry
  7. bawds
  8. bawdship
  9. bawdships
  10. bawdy
  11. bawdy basket

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bawdry (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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