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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
crass
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a crass remark
▪ We live in a time of crass materialism.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But this isn't just another crass commercialisation of a fictional character.
▪ He is wincing in a 1940s fleapit auditorium where they are showing a crass adaptation of one of his books.
▪ How did birthdays become less like Thanksgiving and more like the crass side of Christmas?
▪ The materialism was crass, everyone's expectations had been aroused, and few people had been satisfied.
▪ The primary motive is to free the self from a life that is necessarily rendered crass and degrading by society.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Crass

Crass \Crass\ (kr?s),

  1. [L. crassus thick, fat, gross, pro

  2. orig., closely woven. See Grease animal fat, and cf. Crate, Hurdle.] Gross; thick; dense; coarse; not elaborated or refined. ``Crass and fumid exhalations.''
    --Sir. T. Browne. ``Crass ignorance''
    --Cudworth.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
crass

1540s, from Middle French crasse (16c.), from Latin crassus "solid, thick, fat; dense." The literal sense always has been rare in English; meaning "grossly stupid" is recorded from 1650s, from French. Middle English had cras (adj.) "slow, sluggish, tardy" (mid-15c.), also crassitude "thickness." Related: Crassly; crassness.

Wiktionary
crass

a. 1 coarse; crude; unrefined or sensible; lacking discrimination 2 materialistic 3 dense

WordNet
crass

adj. (of persons) so unrefined as to be lacking in discrimination and sensibility

Wikipedia
Crass

Crass were an English collective and punk rock band formed in 1977 which promoted anarchism as a political ideology, a way of life and a resistance movement. Crass popularised the anarcho-punk movement of the punk subculture, advocating direct action, animal rights and environmentalism. The band used and advocated a DIY punk ethic approach to its sound collages, leaflets, albums and films.

Crass spray-painted stencilled graffiti messages in the London Underground system and on advertising billboards, coordinated squats and organised political action. The band expressed its ideals by dressing in black, military-surplus-style clothing and using a stage backdrop amalgamating icons of perceived authority such as the Christian cross, the swastika, the Union Jack and the ouroboros.

The band was critical of punk subculture and youth culture in general. Crass promoted an anarchism which became more common in the punk-music scene. They are considered art punk in their use of tape collages, graphics, spoken word releases, poetry and improvisation.

Usage examples of "crass".

He was such great copy, guaranteed to say something indefensibly dumb, paranoid or just plain crass.

It is a massive reductionism, he says, that collapses truth and meaning into functional capacity, and reduces intersubjectivity to rather crass egocentrism.

Vimana was built by human hands, of crass metal, but by the presence of my orichalcum body within it, the particles of its substance have been transmuted.

Even the most inorganic thinker or scientifico, the crassest materialist or mechanist, is subject to his own destiny, his own soul, his own character, his own lifespan, and outside this framework of destiny his free, unbound flight of causal fancy cannot deliver him.

Very often these recent anthologies have had my name blown out of proportion on the covers for crass commercial reasons, and over my protests, since I contribute no more than my fair share.

Though driven by crass commercial considerations, most publishers and record companies do apply certain quality standards routinely and thus are positioned to provide these rating services reliably.

Human nature knows millions of these inconsequent little feuds, springing up and flourishing apart from any basis of racial, political, religious or economic causes, as a hint perhaps to crass unseeing altruists that enmity has its place and purpose in the world as well as benevolence.

It should have been a public inquiry into the crass incompetence of William Carter, Interpol's English archivist entrusted honoured with assembling and annotating all the uncollated material about the organization's most famous officer.

The downtown skyline, which had seemed to sprout overnight in a burst of civic priapism, struck Stranahan as a crass but impressive prop, an elaborate movie set.

Sometimes Chas could be a little crass, but the thing she liked about him was that he was older, therefore he wasn't pawing her day and night like some of the younger guys she'd been with.

Of course, consequent causal ignorance always follows upon culpable retention, which can be caused and spread by three subsidiary kinds of ignoranceaffected, connatural and crass.

But there is a crasser and a more refined supernaturalism, and it is to the refined division that most philosophers at the present day belong.

But this view that judgment and execution go together is that of the crasser supernaturalist way of thinking, so the present volume must on the whole be classed with the other expressions of that creed.

The balance, crasser and more worldly, packed up their gear and returned to their headquarters in Turon, Mazovia.

Always the sun grew larger and hotter above the fuming swamps that teemed with a crasser life, with a more fulsome vegetation.