crudity
(ˈkruːdɪtɪ)
[ad. L. crūditās, f. crūdus crude, or perh. immediately a. F. crudité (14th c.).]
1. The state or quality of being raw, unrefined, untempered, unripe, etc.
| 1638 Rawley tr. Bacon's Life & Death (1650) 41 To keep it to the age of a yeare..whereby the water may lose the Crudity. 1655 Culpepper Riverius x. vi. 296 Waters..wherein there is Crudity or a Mineral. 1707 Floyer Phys. Pulse-Watch 67 These several degrees of Crudity appear in Grapes. 1729 G. Shelvocke Artillery iv. 292 Lead, divested of its Crudity and Grossness by being purified. |
b. An instance of this; also
concr. (in
pl.) raw products; unripe or uncooked substances.
| 1626 Bacon Sylva §326 To say..that if the Crudities, Impurities, and Leprosies of Metals were cured, they would become Gold. 1676 G. Etherege Man of Mode i. i, In Fee with the Doctors to sell green Fruit to the Gentry, that the Crudities may breed Diseases. 1870 H. Macmillan Bible Teach., How to convert these crudities of nature into nutritious vegetables. |
2. Phys. Of food: The state of being imperfectly digested, or the quality of being indigestible; indigestion; also, in old physiology, imperfect ‘concoction’ of the humours; undigested (or indigestible) matter in the stomach;
pl. imperfectly ‘concocted’ humours. ?
Obs.| 1533 Elyot Cast. Helthe iv. i. (1541) 74 b, Cruditie is a vycious concoction of thynges receyued, they not beinge holly or perfitely altered. 1601 Holland Pliny II. 259 The crudities or raw humors lying in the stomack, which cause loathing and abhorring of meat. 1670 Cotton Espernon iii. xi. 536, I do not think any stomach in the world, but his, could have digested so much crudity. 1684 tr. Bonet's Merc. Compit. iii. 87 Crudities are the cause of all Catarrhs. 1785 Reid Int. Powers iv. iv. 387 Crudities and indigestion are said to give uneasy dreams. 1860 Emerson Cond. Life, Fate Wks. (Bohn) II. 327 A crudity in the blood will appear in the argument. |
| fig. 1611 (title), Coryats Crudities, hastily gobled vp in fiue Moneths travells in France, Italy [etc.]. |
b. The firmness or hardness of morbid matter before it is ‘ripe’; the early or immature stage of a disease.
| 1727–51 Chambers, Crudity sometimes denotes that state of a disease, wherein the morbific matter is of such bulk, figure, cohesion, mobility, or inactivity, as creates or increases the disease. 1847 Todd Cycl. Anat. iv. 107/2 When tuberculous matter has existed..in the state of firmness or ‘crudity’. |
3. Of mental products, etc. (also
transf. of persons): The condition of being immature, undeveloped, ill-digested.
| 1869 Farrar Fam. Speech i. (1873) 7 Languages in every stage of crudity or development. 1879 Gladstone Glean. I. 49 He gave no signs of crudity, never affected knowledge he did not possess. |
b. (with
a and
pl.) An instance of crudity; a crude idea, statement, piece of literary work, etc.
| 1652 Bp. Hall Rem. Wks. (1660) 152 They have nothing in them, but cold crudities. 1710 Addison Tatler No. 239 ¶2 This Author, in the last of his Crudities, has amassed together a Heap of Quotations. 1859 Mill Liberty v. (1865) 67/1 Rushing into some half-examined crudity which has struck the fancy. 1879 Morley Burke 26 The book is full of crudities. |
4. Unpolished plainness or ‘brutality’ of statement or expression:
cf. crude 8.
| 1885 Spectator 30 May 704/2 Nor did he recoil from Rabelaisian crudity of expression. |