Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Crude; unrefined.
- adj. Awkward or clumsy; ungraceful.
- adj. Archaic Foreign; unfamiliar.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Not known. Not common; unusual; rare; hence, elegant; beautiful.
- Not commonly known; not familiar; strange; foreign.
- Strange and suspicious; uncanny; such as to arouse suspicion, dread, fear, or alarm.
- Strange and awkward; characterized by awkwardness, clumsiness, or oddity: now the usual meaning: as, uncouth manners or behavior.
- Not knowing; ignorant.
- Synonyms . Ungainly, Bungling, etc. See awkward.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. obsolete Unknown.
- adj. obsolete Uncommon; rare; exquisite; elegant.
- adj. Unfamiliar; strange; hence, mysterious; dreadful; also, odd; awkward; boorish.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. lacking refinement or cultivation or taste
Etymologies
- Old English uncūþ; un- + couth. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, unknown, strange, from Old English uncūth : un-, not; see un-1 + cūth, known; see gnō- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Well, you said you wanted to appear uncouth, and part of being uncouth is being like a rube, or 'stupid'.”
“What’s uncouth is that pell-mell deployment of punctuation, Paul.”
“Poland; as a principle, we hated Napoleon, though he had neither act nor part in the doings of the democrats; and the sea-songs of Dibdin, which our youth _now_ would call uncouth and ungraceful rhymes, were key-notes to public feeling; the English of that time were thoroughly”
International Weekly Miscellany - Volume 1, No. 7, August 12, 1850
“And that latter saying is true, though it must be remembered that Hallam wrote in the period when no English was recognized by literary people except that of the upper level, when they did not know that these so-called uncouth phrases were to return to common use.”
“Infidels must not be allowed to coin uncouth meanings for words, different from the known usage of the English tongue, for which Webster is undeniable authority.”
Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity
“He, being every day alarmed at the prospect of a successor, addressed himself to the task of conciliating Valens, who was of a rustic and rather simple character, by tickling him with all kinds of disguised flattery and caresses, calling his uncouth language and rude expressions "flowers of Ciceronian eloquence.”
“I am not without regard for the Merriam-Webster dictionary, but my advice to those who do not want to be regarded as anything from uneducated to uncouth is to stick with the unadorned”
“Build on facts, not some silly argument about who's "uncouth".”
"The trouble with Sanjay Gupta," says Paul Krugman, is seen in the way he "mugged" Michael Moore.
“Possibly some of us have been doing independent research into the state of health care financing and US policy since the first Bush was in office, and have been able to draw our own conclusions about Moore's information not based on his appearance or "uncouth" behavior?”
"The trouble with Sanjay Gupta," says Paul Krugman, is seen in the way he "mugged" Michael Moore.
“How "uncouth", hey? sometimes I even get a hotdog.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘uncouth’.
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The weird, the wonderful and the plai...
Loved for their ingenuity, an exact description, or simply for the pure joy of it.
acidulous, aprosdoketon, higgledy-piggledy, lexicographical, ninja, audacious, somnabulist, shivaree, amorphous, quidnunc, glib, melancholy and 353 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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scholarly writing words
decrement, replete, impel, iterative, subsume, tacit, vex, denote, impart, ascertain, coalesce, extant and 49 more...
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Kalli's Words
redundant, munchkin, escapade, natch, boom, fap, geek, nocturnal, pedantic, tactile, conversant, oxymoron and 188 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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ICE
quincunx, adoxography, panjundrum, breloque, surd, scripturient, rousant, favrile, embouchure, aquarelle, griffonage, sussultatory and 234 more...
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generationnext's Words
petulant, vehement, pensive, lascivious, vacillate, histrionic, satiated, svelte, lithe, zeitgeist, viscous, sommelier and 526 more...
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Words I Know
List of most of the words I've learned
garner, abase, abate, abdicate, abduct, aberration, abet, abhor, abide, abject, abjure, abnegation and 1046 more...
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Personal Vocabulary List
All my favourite words that I come across!
veritable, incongruence, rigamorole, letcherous, revolting, repulsive, reputrid, rapatious, forays, guise, placate, paradigm and 1162 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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ashton's Words
genocide, boingy, umwelt, zeitgeist, fungible, vorpal, spawn, discordian, fnord, surreptitious, xyzzy, corruption and 122 more...
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Un-word List
untrammelled, untoward, unenthusiastically, unenthusiastic, undaunted, uncanny, unceasing, unbridled, unacknowledged, unacquainted, unadorned, unaffected and 239 more...
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gerwitz's Words
erudite, autodidactic, callipygian, ouroboros, zounds, fie, wabi, sabi, gedankenexperiment, zeitgeist, eliminativism, aether and 157 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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miltonic
liberty, froth-becurlèd, host, huge-bellied, aghast, rills, gladsom, wrathfull, ordain, thunder-clasping, ruddy, warble and 264 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for uncouth.
bilby WeirdNET's cheating, he's been using a dictionary. Jul 7, 2008
Prolagus So, uncouth means uncouth. Thank you, weirdnet. Jul 7, 2008
brtom "Not stiff with prudence, nor uncouthly wild ..."
Sheridan, School for Scandal Jan 2, 2008