as in rudeness
the quality or state of lacking refinement or good taste
the indelicacy of their dinner conversation made the other guests wince in embarrassment
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of indelicacy
The Trump era is one of indelicacy, profanity, and real—not imagined—misogyny, and its flacks deserve a language that matches up.
—
Josephine Livingstone,
The New Republic,
5 June 2018
Trump added, seemingly referring to the indelicacy of directly attacking a war hero who is fighting brain cancer.
—
Callum Borchers,
Washington Post,
28 Feb. 2018
These are only some of the indelicacies that have issued forth from Trump’s mouth:
But the current era of political obscenity also must be put in historical context.
—
Jeet Heer,
New Republic,
8 June 2017
Josephine Livingstone,
The New Republic,
5 June 2018
Trump added, seemingly referring to the indelicacy of directly attacking a war hero who is fighting brain cancer.
—
Callum Borchers,
Washington Post,
28 Feb. 2018
These are only some of the indelicacies that have issued forth from Trump’s mouth:
But the current era of political obscenity also must be put in historical context.
—
Jeet Heer,
New Republic,
8 June 2017
Recent Examples of Synonyms for indelicacy
Noun
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And as with your grandmother’s ability to counter rudeness with a clever quip, this seemingly innocuous cocktail, too, packs a mighty punch.
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Comprising classmates Nilsson, Nutt, James Falconer, Suellen Rocca, Art Green, and Karl Wirsum, the Who held their first exhibition at Chicago’s Hyde Park Art Center in 1966, ushering a new mode of dank, bawdy rudeness into the city’s milieu.
Noun
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That feeling stops, however, when pulling into gas stations or parking lots, where the length and lowness of the car require extreme care to keep the chin from scraping.
Noun
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All your Dad has to do is fill it and drink—the microfilter membrane will do the rest by removing chlorine odors, dirt, bacteria, and any other grossness floating around in there.
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There are no great surprises from here on out, though the sheer, lusty grossness of the fallout is occasionally startling.
Noun
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The result is an aesthetic that skillfully balances a variety of textures, including injecting Shou Sugi Ban custom treatments inspired by Japanese principles of wabi-sabi that typically employ elements of asymmetry, roughness, and simplicity.
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Features such as surface roughness and protruding fibers create more sites where particles can stick to the outer surface rather than passing through.
Noun
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But many seemingly urbane texts also benefited from the intellectual and moral coarseness of their times.
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The term plant texture refers to the fineness or coarseness, roughness or smoothness, heaviness or lightness of a particular plant.
Noun
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Benoit delights in language as much as her heroine, weaving Regency-era slang throughout and appending a chapter-by-chapter glossary of vulgarities.
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On Monday night, that park seemed so far away as Knicks fans rained vulgarities down on Wembanyama and his teammates inside Madison Square Garden.
Noun
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There’s some rudeness, aggressive conversations, and crudeness, but nothing too over the top.
Cite this Entry
“Indelicacy.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/indelicacy. Accessed 29 Jun. 2026.
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