Indecent, crude, or sexually inappropriate in a way that offends people.
From Old English 'læwede,' meaning lay or non-clerical. By the 1300s, it came to mean crude or ignorant, then evolved to mean sexually crude and offensive.
The word 'lewd' originally just meant 'not a priest'—laypeople—because the church considered common folk to be crude and crude to be lustful; centuries later it means purely sexual obscenity.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.