crass

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin crassus (“solid, thick, dense, fat”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Barnhart, Etymonline and Dictionary.com bring it through Middle French crasse.^[7][8][9] The OED compares this feminine form, recorded in the 16th century, and notes that Old French had cras, now gras.^[2] Weekley notes that the French adjective survives in this form only in the feminine, as in French ignorance crasse.^[10] The origin of the Latin word is unknown to Etymonline.^[8] Barnhart relates it to crātis (“wickerwork, hurdle”),^[7] and Klein derives it from an Indo-European base meaning "to roll or twist together".^[11] The Latin adjective is also the source of grease and cresset.^[12][11] Middle English had cras (“slow, sluggish”), from the same Old French and Latin words.^[13][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Coarse, thick or dense in texture: 1545, in Thomas Raynald's translation of Roesslin's Byrth of Mankynde,^[2] and 1545 also in Barnhart and Merriam-Webster.^[7][3] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English date the word to the late 15th century.^[5][14]

Semantic evolution

The literal sense has always been rare in English.^[8][2] The sense now usual, grossly dull or stupid, applied to qualities and ideas, is recorded from 1660,^[2][7] or from the 1650s in Etymonline;^[8] it had been used earlier in French, as in ignorance crasse.^[7][8] Johnson (1755) knew only the physical sense: gross, coarse, not thin or fine.^[15] From 1861, in Thackeray, it was applied to people, grossly stupid or insensitive.^[2]

Timeline

• before 1475 – Middle English cras, slow, sluggish, in Lydgate.^[13]
• 1545 – coarse, thick, dense in texture.^[2][7][3]
• 1649 – material as opposed to spiritual (obsolete by 1664).^[2]
• 1660 – of ideas and qualities, gross, grossly dull or stupid.^[2][7]
• 1861 – of persons, grossly stupid or insensitive.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Lacking refinement or sensitivity; gross, tasteless or stupid: a crass remark about the funeral.^[16][3][2]
2. Beneath one's dignity; vulgar or merely material: the crass business of fund-raising.^[3]
3. (archaic) Thick, dense or coarse in texture.^{[3][2][5][15]}

Word family

• crassitude
• crassly
• crassness

Related words

• grease
• cresset
• crate
• incrassate

Usage notes

In the dialects of Ireland, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Sussex, crass is a form of cross in the sense "angry, ill-tempered".^[17] The noun crass, recorded from 1857, was a collectors' name for a sea anemone, shortened from its species name crassicornis.^[2]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
13. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
14. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)