Crude, offensive, or lacking in refinement; originally meaning 'of the common people' or ordinary.
From Latin vulgaris meaning 'of the crowd, common, ordinary', from vulgus meaning 'common people'. The negative connotations developed over time as 'common' became associated with 'crude' or 'unrefined' in the minds of the educated classes.
The semantic journey of 'vulgar' from simply meaning 'common' to 'crude' reveals fascinating class attitudes - what started as a neutral descriptor became a value judgment, showing how language can encode social hierarchies. The 'Vulgar Latin' spoken by common people eventually became the Romance languages we know today.
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