salacity

Noun

salacity (usually uncountable, plural salacities)

1. (usually) The state or quality of being salacious; lewdness, obscenity, bawdiness.
   • One of the males is sufficient in procreation for seuen or nine of the females, and by that means they are made more fruitful, but if you put them one male to one femal, then will the venereous salacity of the male procure abortment.1607, Edward Topsell, “Of the Indian little Pig-Cony”, in The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes, London, page 112
   • Aristotle gives instance in sparrows, which are parum vivaces ob salacitatem, short-lived because of their salacity, which is very frequent […]1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition 2, section...
2. (countable, usually) An act that is salacious, (lewd, obscene or bawdy); a salacious image or piece of writing.
   • The editors of the Unitarian New Version of the New Testament, who very modestly wish to shovel all these spurcities and salacities out of the sacred text, have the impudence to tell us, in a note, that they were interpolated to lessen the odium attached to Christianity […]1829, Robert Taylor, The Diegesis, London: Richard Carlile, Chapter 22, p. 216, footnote
   • […] from the hilltop were to be seen no cluttered barren lots sodden with spring rain and churned and torn by hoof of horse and cattle, no piles of winter ashes and rusting tin cans, no dingy hoardings covered with the tattered insanities of posted salacities and advertisements.1922, William Faulkner, “The Hill”, in Carvel Collins, editor, William Faulkner: Early Prose and Poetry, Boston: Little, Brown, published 1962, page 91