All 37 Uses

vulgar
in
The American Language, by Mencken
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For one thing, I am eager to attempt a more scientific examination of the grammar of the American vulgar speech, here discussed briefly in Chapter VI.†
*

vulgar = of bad taste (crude, offensive, or unsophisticated)
Faulkner, somewhat belated in his animosity, seized the opportunity to read a homily upon the vulgarity and extravagance of the American language, and argued that the introduction of its coinages through the moving-picture theatre (/Anglais, cinema/) "cannot be regarded without serious [Pg015] misgivings, if only because it generates and encourages mental indiscipline so far as the choice of expressions is concerned."†

vulgarity = bad taste (crude, offensive, or unsophisticated)
This boldness of conceit, of course, makes for vulgarity.†
Let it be admitted: American is not infrequently vulgar; the Americans, too, are vulgar (Bayard Taylor called them "Anglo-Saxons relapsed into semi-barbarism"); America itself is unutterably vulgar.†

vulgar = of bad taste (crude, offensive, or unsophisticated)
Let it be admitted: American is not infrequently vulgar; the Americans, too, are vulgar (Bayard Taylor called them "Anglo-Saxons relapsed into semi-barbarism"); America itself is unutterably vulgar.†
Let it be admitted: American is not infrequently vulgar; the Americans, too, are vulgar (Bayard Taylor called them "Anglo-Saxons relapsed into semi-barbarism"); America itself is unutterably vulgar.†
But vulgarity, after all, means no more than a yielding to natural impulses in the face of conventional inhibitions, and that yielding to natural impulses is at the heart of all healthy language-making.†

vulgarity = bad taste (crude, offensive, or unsophisticated)
[38] Examples of its use in the American sense, considered vulgar and even indecent in England, are to be found in Gen. xlviii, 1; II Kings viii, 7; John xi, 1, and Acts ix, 37†

vulgar = of bad taste (crude, offensive, or unsophisticated)
Bartlett hints that /rooster/ came into use in place of /cock/ as a matter of delicacy, the latter word having acquired an indecent significance, and tells us that, at one time, even /bull/ was banned as too vulgar for refined ears.†
Gould, in the 50's, noted its appearance at the end of such words as /somewhere/ and /anyway/, and denounced it as vulgar and illogical.†
How far this destruction of its forms may go in the absence of strong contrary influences is exhibited by the rise of the Romance languages from the vulgar Latin of the Roman provinces, and, here at home, by the decay of foreign languages in competition with English.†
Some linger on the edge of vulgarity: /pep/ for /pepper/, /flu/ for /influenza/, /plute/ for /plutocrat/, /pen/ for /penitentiary/, /con/ for /confidence/ (as in /con-man/, /con-game/ and /to con/), /convict/ and /consumption/, /defi/ for /defiance/, /beaut/ for /beauty/, /rep/ for /reputation/, /stenog/ for /stenographer/, /ambish/ for /ambition/, /vag/ for /vagrant/, /champ/ for /champion/, /pard/ for /partner/, /coke/ for /cocaine/, /simp/ for /simpleton/, /diff/ for /difference/.†

vulgarity = bad taste (crude, offensive, or unsophisticated)
But here we invade the vulgar speech, which belongs to the next chapter.†

vulgar = of bad taste (crude, offensive, or unsophisticated)
Where these tendencies run strongest, of course, is on the plane of the vulgar spoken language.†
Thus he is thrown back upon these speech-habits without any helpful restraint or guidance, and they make him a willing ally of the radical and often extravagant tendencies which show themselves in the vulgar tongue.†
This tendency went furthest, of course, in the vulgar speech, and it has been embalmed in the English dialects.†
Thus /het/, as the preterite of /to heat/, no doubt owes its existence to the example of /et/, the vulgar preterite of /to eat/.†
In vulgar American another step is taken, and the suffix is dropped altogether.†
The misuse of the perfect participle for the preterite, now almost the invariable rule in vulgar American, is common to many other dialects of English, and seems to be a symptom of a general decay of the perfect tenses.†
[48] Paradoxically enough, the very purists who performed the purging showed a preference for /got/ (though not for /forgot/), and it survives in correct English today in the preterite-present form, as in "I have /got/," whereas in American, both vulgar and polite, the elder and more regular /gotten/ is often used†
In the vulgar speech, much the same distinction exists, but the perfect becomes a sort of simple tense by the elision of /have/.†
In American its conjugation coalesces with that of /am/ in the following manner: /Present/ I am /Past Perfect/ I had of ben /Present Perfect/ I bin (or ben) /Future/ I will be /Past/ I was /Future Perfect/ (wanting) And in the subjunction: /Present/ If I am /Past Perfect/ If I had of ben /Past/ If I was All signs of the subjunctive, indeed, seem to be disappearing from vulgar American.†
And equally without question it supports the vulgar American usage today.†
/Whom/, as we have seen, is fast disappearing from standard spoken American;[60] in the vulgar language it is already virtually extinct.†
This movement, of course, is not peculiar to vulgar American; nor is it of recent beginning.†
All these liberties with the personal pronouns, however, fade to insignificance when put beside the thoroughgoing confusion of the case forms in vulgar American.†
The result of this reaction is that the /me/ in such constructions as 'between John and /me/' and 'he saw John and /me/' sounds vulgar and ungrammatical, and is consequently corrected into /I/.†
The bob-tailed adverb, indeed, enters into a large number of the commonest coins of vulgar speech.†
It is just this disdain of purely grammatical reasons that is at the bottom of most of the phenomena visible in vulgar American, and the same impulse is observable in all other languages during periods of inflectional decay.†
Vulgar American, like all the higher forms of American and all save the most precise form of written English, has abandoned the old inflections of /here/, /there/ and /where/, to wit, /hither/ and /hence/, /thither/ and /thence/, /whither/ and /whence/.†
Finally, it goes without saying that the common American tendency to add /-s/ to such adverbs as /towards/ is carried to full length in the vulgar language.†
§ 6 /The Noun and Adjective/—The only inflections of the noun remaining in English are those for number and for the genitive, and so it is in these two regions that the few variations to be noted in vulgar American occur.†
§ 7 /The Double Negative/—Syntactically, perhaps the chief characteristic of vulgar American is its sturdy fidelity to the double negative.†
The Irish influence probably had something to do with its prosperity in vulgar American.†
[67] It may be worth noting here that the misuse of /me/ for /my/, as in "I lit /me/ pipe" is quite unknown in American, either standard or vulgar†
Louis/ influenced the local pronunciation of /Illinois/, which is /Illinoy/, but this may be a mere attempt to improve upon the vulgar /Illin-i/.†
[15] The American newspapers, years ago, passed through such a stage of bombast, but since the invention of yellow journalism by the elder James Gordon Bennett—that is, the invention of journalism for the frankly ignorant and vulgar—they have gone to the other extreme†

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Definitions:

(1) (vulgar)
of bad taste -- often crude or offensive

or:

unsophisticated (or common) -- especially of taste
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)

vulgar in The American Language, by Mencken (Auto-generated)

vulgar
in
The American Language, by Mencken
(Auto-generated)