Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use obscenity in a sentence

28 example sentences · noun

Obscenity means something that is obscene. Example: “Martha wouldn't go into the art museum because, as she put it, "They have obscenities just sitting out, on display!"”

Examples of obscenity by meaning

nounSomething that is obscene.

  • Martha wouldn't go into the art museum because, as she put it, "They have obscenities just sitting out, on display!"

nounAn act of obscene behaviour.

  • Bestiality was outlawed as an obscenity in the strongly conservative community.

nounSpecifically, an offensive word; a profanity; a dirty word.

  • Eliza couldn't stand her daughter's music; as she saw it, it was just shouted obscenities and a heavy drum beat.
  • That's how he found out that queca, with one C, is an obscenity in Portuguese.2023 January 10, Adam Rogers, “Move over, megatons”, in Business Insider, archived from the original on 19 Apr 2023

nounLewdness, indecency, or offensive behaviour or material.

  • The coalition of religious conservatives was campaigning against, in their view, rampant obscenity in the entertainment industry.
  • It dragged for years through local and federal courts around the country in a welter of obscenity trials in which it was variously banned, unbanned and rebanned.2008 October 29, Margalit Fox, “Damiano, 80, directed 'Deep Throat'”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 18 Dec 2022

nounThe fact of being obscene.

  • Henia Flint Goodman, a Holocaust survivor,spoke in outrage against the obscenity of anti-abortion literature which compares a woman's free choice to have an abortion with the crimes of the Nazi state.1983 February 5, Shawn Towey, “Philly Women Convict Right”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 28, page 1

More sentences with obscenity

  • They had to blank out five obscenities before airing the song.From the entry blank out
  • She was furious and let fly at him with a string of obscenities.From the entry let fly
  • Vandals spray-painted obscenities on the side of the building.From the entry vandal
  • Saying that obscenity is indecent and then saying something is indecent if it's obscene is a circular definition.From the entry circular definition
  • The nineteen-fifties was also a time when literary publishers were frequently indicted for obscenity.2025 August 5, Danny Goldberg, “A Guest Post By Danny Goldberg: Culture, Empathy And Resistance”, in DownWithTyranny, archived from the…. From the entry nineteen-fifties
  • Carlin also got arrested at one of comedian Lenny Bruce’s obscenity busts.2020 July 24, Dennis Simanaitis, “CELEBRATING GEORGE CARLIN”, in Simanaitis Says, archived from the original on 16 May 2022. From the entry carlin
  • Various groups in Mumbai filed police complaints about the alleged obscenity of the show.2015 February 24, Amrit Dhillon, “India struggles to develop what it sadly lacks: A sense of humour”, in The Globe and Mail. From the entry foam at the mouth
  • I had my window open, and mouthed some obscenity towards him.a. 2007, “Jones” (former police officer; possible pseudonym), quoted in Tom Rennie, Governors, Guns and Money, Lulu.com, page 78. From the entry cut up
  • Early mentality, in initiating phallic worship, was never in any way guilty of licentiousness or obscenity.1941, George Ryley Scott, Phallic Worship: A History of Sex and Sex Rites in Relation to the Religions of All Races from Antiquity to the…. From the entry licentiousness
  • Dunn is accused of throwing the sub-style sandwich, hitting Lairmore in the chest, minutes after shouting the obscenities.2025 August 13, Gary Grumbach and Zoë Richards, “Man accused of hurling sandwich at federal agent in D.C. gets hit with felony assault…. From the entry Lairmore
  • This movie is a historical achievement: Clint Eastwood, an icon of violence, has made us loathe violence as an obscenity.2003 October 13, The New Yorker. From the entry loathe
  • Harsh obscenities came from different corners of the room.1954, Ian Fleming, “Table Z”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 59. From the entry tom-tom
  • If a propagandum play may be justly called sensational what shall we say of one which panders to obscenity?1919 July, Wilton Lackaye, “Is the Stage of Today Worth While?”, in Theatre Magazine, volume XXX, number 221, New York, N.Y.: The Theatre…. From the entry propagandum
  • This last phenomenon is sometimes referred to as ‘the clbuttic effect’, named in honour of the mangling of the word ‘classic’ by over-zealous obscenity filters.2013, Tom Chatfield, Netymology, →ISBN, page 21. From the entry clbuttic
  • Symptoms such as mental coprolalia (the thinking of obscenities), coprographia (the writing of obscenities) and mental palilalia are usually unrecognized unless specifically asked about.1995, Mary Robertson, Valsamma Eapen, Movement and Allied Disorders in Childhood, page 2. From the entry coprographia
  • Provide them with a mansion, and they will rip out the plumbing, write obscenities on the walls, and generally foul up their own nest.1992, Roy Masters, Secrets of a Parallel Universe, →ISBN, page 142. From the entry foul one's own nest
  • The defendant was Mature Enterprises Inc., operator of the World, a Manhattan skin-flick theater charged with promoting obscenity by showing the highly publicized "Deep Throat."1972 May 12, “Tyler's Style”, in Time. From the entry skin-flick
  • Barry continued to shout obscenities and to flail about in a strait jacket, finally succumbing to the effects of intravenously administered tranquilizers.1969, Theodore Millon, Modern Psychopathology: A Biosocial Approach to Maladaptive Learning and Functioning. From the entry flail about
  • Unfortunately the Coomers failed to see the humor of the situation, and I picked up several new obscenities and some fascinating combinations of the mouth-soaping words I already knew.2001, Lewis Hill, Fetched-Up Yankee, page 94. From the entry mouth soaping
  • I somehow expected them to shout obscenities, and was glad I had come ordinarily dressed, in a sports shirt, an old linen jacket, jeans and daps.1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 169. From the entry dap
  • Sometimes these sagas and anecdotes are touched with ribaldry, or with excessive obscenity, according to the times, and sometimes they are rooted in obscure but still verifiable deistic concepts.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 88. From the entry verifiable

Meaning of obscenity

  1. noun Something that is obscene.
  2. noun An act of obscene behaviour.
  3. noun Specifically, an offensive word; a profanity; a dirty word.

Full definition of obscenity

Questions about obscenity in a sentence

How do you use obscenity in a sentence?
Obscenity is used as a noun. For example: “Martha wouldn't go into the art museum because, as she put it, "They have obscenities just sitting out, on display!"”
What is a short sentence with obscenity?
“Harsh obscenities came from different corners of the room.”
What does obscenity mean?
Obscenity means something that is obscene.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: obscenity (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use obscenity in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/obscenity. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.