What's the difference between decency and obscene?

Decency


Definition:

  • (n.) The quality or state of being decent, suitable, or becoming, in words or behavior; propriety of form in social intercourse, in actions, or in discourse; proper formality; becoming ceremony; seemliness; hence, freedom from obscenity or indecorum; modesty.
  • (n.) That which is proper or becoming.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This is not some sophisticated, Westminstery battle, but a life-and-death, misery-or-decency choice about the very basics of life for hundreds of thousands of older British people.
  • (2) "Throughout America, the Queen stands for decency and civility."
  • (3) Yes, Goldsmith is to be held in contempt: a man of decency would have rejected this gutter strategy.
  • (4) "Sir Alex Ferguson had the decency to phone me to let me know that he was going in another direction after I applied for the reserve team post at Manchester United in 2003.
  • (5) As Obama put it in her speech today, this isn’t about politics, “it’s about basic human decency”.
  • (6) Having been born in Belgium he didn't start from a belief in the inferiority of other countries, but he loved Britain for the security it offered his family and the gentle decency of our nation."
  • (7) She is talking to Dizzee Rascal, who at least has the decency to goon around for the camera.
  • (8) If Whittingdale had any honour, any mercy, and any basic human decency, he would murder David Attenborough himself today, in his bed, to spare him any further suffering.
  • (9) But we can all probably do without Fifa's "fair play in marketing" lectures, which clothe commercial ruthlessness in the language of sporting decency, apparently oblivious to the impression given by wallpapering every stadium with signs that push BP or declare "We proudly accept only Visa".
  • (10) Neither the Congress nor evaluators have clear concepts of what constitutes a life of decency and dignity for the chronically dependent.
  • (11) At 6ft 3in tall, the lanky Peck was a pillar of moral rectitude standing up for decency and tolerance.
  • (12) Austerity as we know it – where basic human decency is sacrificed to solutions that purport to be cheaper but turn out not to be – actually started before the austerity narrative.
  • (13) Decency is one of those lines.” Erickson also told reporters: “I don’t want to put words in [Trump’s] mouth and I hate using the label misogynist because I think its used too much but he’s suggesting a woman as a lady asked him a question and did so because it was her time of the month.
  • (14) I hope David Cameron has the decency to invite you around for coffee or lunch as Tony Blair and David Blunkett did once I was out.
  • (15) A former director general of the prison service, Martin Narey, who now has a contract with the firm as a consultant on decency in G4S prisons, says he was once vehemently opposed to private-sector involvement in the prison service before he was appointed in 1998.
  • (16) Few would challenge the Camerons' fundamental decency.
  • (17) Looking first at the smaller politics, the attack by Fallon on Miliband’s decency and fitness for No 10 was a risky play by the Tories.
  • (18) In Uncommon Danger, the representatives of communism and what Zaleshoff calls "moderate radicalism" but Kenton himself would probably think of as basic human decency are pitted against the agents of capital and fascism: Balterghen, Saridza and their many cronies.
  • (19) But the depth of this tragedy also drew out the decency and determination of our nation.
  • (20) Fry wrote: "I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathsome and inhumane.

Obscene


Definition:

  • (a/) Offensive to chastity or modesty; expressing of presenting to the mind or view something which delicacy, purity, and decency forbid to be exposed; impure; as, obscene language; obscene pictures.
  • (a/) Foul; fifthy; disgusting.
  • (a/) Inauspicious; ill-omened.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) These letters are also written during a period when Joyce was still smarting from the publishing difficulties of his earlier works Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” Gordon Bowker, Joyce’s biographer, agreed: “Joyce’s problem with the UK printers related to the fact that here in those days printers were as much at risk of prosecution on charges of publishing obscenities as were publishers, and would simply refuse to print them.
  • (2) The footballer, who plays for club side Gabala and the national team , had waved a Turkish flag during a Europa League match in Cyprus, and appeared to make an obscene gesture at a Greek journalist who asked why he had done so.
  • (3) A catalogue of errors allowed the broadcast on Radio 2 of a series of obscene messages the pair had left on the actor Andrew Sachs's answerphone.
  • (4) Randall, a former banking computer analyst and a widower with two grownup daughters, learned on Wednesday that charges of "trafficking obscene material" had been dropped and he was to be deported.
  • (5) Zimmerman was charged with an offence of sending by public communication network an offensive, indecent, obscene, menacing message or matter.
  • (6) The Occupy protesters outside St Paul's Cathedral in London named their camp "Tahrir Square" while they sat cross-legged, sang songs and consumed Marks & Spencer sandwiches, oblivious to the obscenity of a comparison with freedom fighters who risked their lives in Egypt.
  • (7) And while Altmejd presents sexual scenes of cartoonish horror and disgust, Lucas's art has embraced lavatorial humour, abjection, self-denigration, the pithy sculptural one-liner and the obscene gesture.
  • (8) Reuters's source said police told Ai: "You criticised the government, so we are going to let all society know that you're an obscene person, you evaded taxes, you have two wives, we want to shame you.
  • (9) Ing concedes she is hardly a fan of a man she accuses of a "blatant and obscene lack of ethics", but rejects the accusation that the film is anti-Thaksin propaganda: her use of red, for instance, was decided long before it became associated with his redshirts .
  • (10) The guidelines say that prosecutions should not be brought under obscenity laws but on the basis of the menace and humiliation intended, and in the most serious cases, where intimate images are used to coerce victims into further sexual activity, under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
  • (11) Several other places were vetoed on account of various scandals and disputes, and I have also excluded luxurious and obscenely priced retreats.
  • (12) One Barking and Dagenham resident – a British citizen with Indian Caribbean heritage – described the BNP leaflet campaign as "obscene".
  • (13) Yet our confusions over the c-word are demonstrated by the fact that it has been common in recent years to find hundreds of women standing in a public arena and yelling the gynaecological obscenity: the setting is performances of the drama The Vagina Monologues, in which one sequence invites women to reclaim and empower the down-there noun.
  • (14) He was prosecuted under section 127(1) of the Communications Act 2003, which prohibits sending "by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character".
  • (15) The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has buried that obscene version of history by convicting Bagosora of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes – and, in the process, establishing that what happened in Rwanda in 1994 was neither accidental nor spontaneous.
  • (16) He included the text of an email sent to the National Gallery of Victoria’s curatorial team on 12 September saying any work using the pieces could not “contain any political, religious, racist, obscene or defaming statements”.
  • (17) Can you still read and do the things you want?’ And he said that since he’d had his child, he had more time because it made him stronger, more concentrated, more serious.’” We discuss how the word “feminism” was considered an obscenity during their trial.
  • (18) Club leaders, who argue that a wife should serve as a "good sex worker" and a "whore" to her husband, showed the book to journalists last month in an effort to dispel what they called misconceptions that it was obscene and demeaning to women.
  • (19) The district judge Elizabeth Roscoe found Nunn guilty of sending indecent, obscene or menacing messages following a trial at City of London magistrates court this month, and jailed him on Monday.
  • (20) • Outrages by Naomi Wolf Naomi Wolf follows Vagina with an examination of the 1857 Obscene Publications Act – the first law to ban the sale of obscene materials.