salacity

From Latin salācītātem, from salāx (“salacious, lustful”) +‎ -ity.

salacity (usually uncountable, plural salacities)

1. (uncountable) The state or quality of being salacious; lewdness, obscenity, bawdiness.
   • 1607, Edward Topsell, The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes, London, “Of the Indian little Pig-Cony” p. 112,

     One of the males is sufficient in procreation for seuen or nine of the females, and by that means they are made more fruitful, but if you put them one male to one femal, then will the venereous salacity of the male procure abortment.

   • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 216894069; The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd corrected and augmented edition, Oxford: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1624, OCLC 54573970, (please specify |partition=1, 2, or 3):

     , II.ii.2:

     Aristotle gives instance in sparrows, which are parum vivaces ob salacitatem, short-lived because of their salacity, which is very frequent […].

   • 1724, Captain Charles Johnson (pseudonym), A General History of the Pyrates, London: T. Warner, Chapter , pp. 203-204,

     The Portugueze, tho’ eminently abstemious and temperate in all other Things, are unbounded in their Lusts; and perhaps they substitute the former in room of a Surgeon, as a Counterpoison to the Mischiefs of a promiscuous Salacity: They have most of them Venereal Taints, and with Age become meager and hectick […]

   • 1900, Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, New York: Doubleday, Page, Chapter 26, p. 270,

     She had had no experience with this class of individuals whatsoever, and did not know the salacity and humour of the theatrical tribe.

   • 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library, Penguin, Chapter 11, p. 148,

     Although it would have been allowed, I did not keep a journal over those six months. From the start I saw that what I wanted to say, although ‘hereafter, in a better world than this’ it might find other readers and do its good, would have brought nothing but scorn and salacity at the time.

2. (countable) An act that is salacious, (lewd, obscene or bawdy); a salacious image or piece of writing.
   • 1829, Robert Taylor, The Diegesis, London: Richard Carlile, Chapter 22, p. 216, footnote,

     The editors of the Unitarian New Version of the New Testament, who very modestly wish to shovel all these spurcities and salacities out of the sacred text, have the impudence to tell us, in a note, that they were interpolated to lessen the odium attached to Christianity […]

   • 1922, William Faulkner, “The Hill” in Carvel Collins (ed.) William Faulkner: Early Prose and Poetry, Boston: Little, Brown, 1962, p. 91,

     […] from the hilltop were to be seen no cluttered barren lots sodden with spring rain and churned and torn by hoof of horse and cattle, no piles of winter ashes and rusting tin cans, no dingy hoardings covered with the tattered insanities of posted salacities and advertisements.

   • 1984, Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot, New York: Vintage, 1990, Chapter 7,

     Sartre decrees that Gustave was never homosexual; merely passive and feminine in his psychology. The byplay with Bouilhet was just teasing, the outer edge of vivid male friendship: Gustave never committed a single homosexual act in all his life. He says he did, but that was boastful invention: Bouilhet asked for salacities from Cairo, and Flaubert provided them [in his letters].