fescennine

comparative more fescennine · superlative most fescennine · alternative Fescennine

1. Obscene or scurrilous.

   For instance, I admit that this book is anacreontic, paphian, and sometimes even fescennine […]

   2003, Mark Steven Morton, The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex, Insomniac Press, page 25

   3 more examples

   [T]he frolicsome company had begun to practise the ancient and now forgotten pastime of High Jinks. This game was played in several different ways. Most frequently the dice were thrown by the company, and those upon whom the lot fell were obliged to assume and maintain, for a time, a certain fictitious character, or to repeat a certain number of fescennine verses in a particular order.

   1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], chapter XV, in Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], →OCLC, pages 264–265

   As the poet decorously shows his desire to consummate the marriage, he retains the fescennine element without being crude.

   1988, James D. Simmonds, Milton Studies, volume 6, University of Pittsburgh Press, page 168

   The conventional complaint over the delay in the proceedings is voiced by the poet in […] [this] series of questions which include fescennine teasing of the bridal couple

   1995, John Donne, Gary A. Stringer, The variorum edition of the poetry of John Donne: The Epigrams, Epithalamions, Epitaphs, Inscriptions and Miscellaneous poems, Indiana University Press, pages 380–1

comparative more Fescennine · superlative most Fescennine · alternative fescennine

1. Of or pertaining to the ancient Etruscan town of Fescennia
2. obscene or scurrilous

   At this hour the seat was as in a theatre, but the words of the actors were of a nature somewhat too Fescennine for the public.

   1856, Richard Francis Burton, Personal narrative of a pilgrimage to El-Madinah and Meccah, G. P. Putnam & Co., page 20

   1 more example

   And when Freudian fiction becomes – as it has become in America – but an inviting wall on which to scribble Fescennine filth – that, too, is another matter.

   1977, C. John McCole, Lucifer at Large, Ayer Publishing, page 108