Vulgar Simply Meant Ordinary
Vulgar means crude or tasteless. The Latin root means the common people, and the older neutral sense survives in Vulgar Latin and the Vulgate.
Vulgar means crude, tasteless or offensive. It began entirely neutrally: Latin *vulgus* meant the common people, and *vulgaris* meant ordinary or in general use. The Vulgate is the Bible translated into ordinary Latin, and Vulgar Latin is the everyday spoken form from which French, Spanish and Italian descend. The slide from common to coarse says a good deal about who wrote the dictionaries.
- Crude or tasteless. *A vulgar joke.*
- Of the common people (older). *The vulgar tongue.*
- Vulgar Latin — everyday spoken Latin. *Vulgar Latin became the Romance languages.*
- Vulgate — the Latin Bible. *Jerome's Vulgate.*
- Vulgar fraction — a common fraction. *Vulgar fractions, not decimals.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Adjective | vulgar | Vulgar display. |
| Adverb | vulgarly | Vulgarly put. |
| Noun | vulgarity | Sheer vulgarity. |
| Verb | vulgarise | To vulgarise the idea. |
| Latin | vulgus | The common people. |
- The decoration was expensive and vulgar.Taste.
- Vulgar Latin is the ancestor of French.Linguistics, neutral.
- A vulgar fraction such as three quarters.Mathematics, neutral.
Words that turned snobbish
- Vulgar — from common to coarse
- Villain — from a farm worker to a criminal
- Boor — from a peasant to a rude person
- Churlish — from a free peasant to ill-mannered
- The pattern — words for ordinary people became insults; the process is called pejoration
Latin *vulgaris*, common, from *vulgus*, the common people. English took it in the 1300s in the neutral sense, and the derogatory meaning grew from the 1600s.
What is Vulgar Latin?
The everyday spoken Latin of ordinary people, as distinct from the literary written form. French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese descend from it.
Why did vulgar become an insult?
Because words describing ordinary people repeatedly acquired negative senses. Villain, boor and churl followed the same path.