WordWealth: ribald

rib·ald , adj.

1. vulgar or indecent in speech, language, etc.; coarsely mocking, abusive, or irreverent; scurrilous.

2. a ribald person.

[1200–50; ME ribald, ribaud (n.) < OF ribau(l)d, equiv. to rib(er) to be licentious (< OHG rīben to copulate, be in heat, lit., rub) + -au(l)d, -alt < Frankish *-wald a suffix in personal names, deriv. of *walden to rule; cf. parallel development of -ARD]

—ribald·ly, adv.

—Syn. 1. indecent, obscene, gross.

—Ant. 1. pure (Random House Webster's Unabridged). Look at Thesaurus.

To the nineteen-twenties H. L. Mencken was a dangerous iconoclast, the relentless and often ribald derider of what he called the booboisie; a man who consorted nightly with the works of Nietzsche and spent the day tracking down Americana for the inside pages of his "anti-American" Mercury. To the forties, on the contrary, he appears simply as a voluminous lexicographer; and this, as everyone knows from Dr. Johnson's definition, is to be "a maker of dictionaries, a harmless drudge." —— Jacques Barzun; Mencken's America Speaking; a literature on Mr. Mencken, as we know, defends the American vernacular and at the same time is ever ready to laugh at the follies of its makers; The Atlantic; Jan 1946

The works of Chaucer and Shakespeare were loaded with ribald language, but no evidence exists that the authors were aware of this special category of words now called slang.
—— Richard B. Woodward; "In Other Words...,"; New York Times, June 5, 1994

If Colonial Harvard could not handle Baptists and Quakers, can Regent's theology speak to an America that has more Buddhist and Muslim and Hindu citizens every day? How diverse could Regent become? Could the "motley collection of pilgrims" on the way to Canterbury ever include gay Christians who also want to be part of the procession? After all, the Wife of Bath and her ribald traveling companions were hardly models of family values. —— Harvey Cox; The Warring Visions of the Religious Right; The Atlantic; Nov 1995

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