obscenity

noun5

1. •
   Something that is obscene.

   • Martha wouldn't go into the art museum because, as she put it, "They have obscenities just sitting out, on display!"
2. •
   An act of obscene behaviour.

   • Bestiality was outlawed as an obscenity in the strongly conservative community.
3. •
   Specifically, 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.
4. •
   Lewdness, indecency, or offensive behaviour or material.

   • The coalition of religious conservatives was campaigning against, in their view, rampant obscenity in the entertainment industry.
5. •
   The 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