Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or character of being sordid.
  • noun Baseness; vileness; depravity.
  • noun Mean, mercenary selfishness or covetousness: as, the sordidness of gambling.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality or state of being sordid.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable The state or quality of being sordid.
  • noun countable The result or product of being sordid.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun unworthiness by virtue of lacking higher values
  • noun sordid dirtiness

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From sordid +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • Even the food at meals had that awful dreary sordidness which is so repulsive to a young thing coming from abroad.

    The Virgin and the Gypsy 2003

  • No room here for all the sordidness, meanness, and viciousness that filled the dirty pool of city existence.

    Chapter VIII 2010

  • We are shown the corrida in all its sordidness and cruelty.

    Monster of Marriage 2010

  • For we lived on the heights, where the air was keen and sparkling, where the toil was for humanity, and where sordidness and selfishness never entered.

    Chapter 11: The Great Adventure 2010

  • * Addressing the dinner guests, Rabbi Jacob Rothschild said, “You gather to honor a man but you honor a city as well, a Southern city that has risen above the sordidness of hate and prejudice.”

    Burial for a King Rebecca Burns 2011

  • Nowhere do we find more vividly portrayed the psychology of the persons that lived in that turbulent period embraced between the years 1912 and 1932 -- their mistakes and ignorance, their doubts and fears and misapprehensions, their ethical delusions, their violent passions, their inconceivable sordidness and selfishness.

    Jack London: The Iron Heel 2010

  • We are shown the corrida in all its sordidness and cruelty.

    Monster of Marriage 2010

  • Francisco, with its restless shipping, belching factories, and thundering traffic, did not confuse her; instead, she comprehended swiftly the pitiful sordidness of Twenty Mile and the skin-lodged

    THE STORY OF JEES UCK 2010

  • All about me were still the same sordidness and wretchedness, and up above me was still the same paradise waiting to be gained; but the ladder whereby to climb was a different one.

    What Life Means to Me 2010

  • Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness, both of the flesh and the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were alike starved and tormented.

    What Life Means to Me 2010

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