[ad. L. crūditās, f. crūdus CRUDE, or perh. immediately a. F. crudité (14th c.).]
1. The state or quality of being raw, unrefined, untempered, unripe, etc.
1638. Rawley, trans. Bacon’s Life & Death (1650), 41. To keep it to the age of a yeare … whereby the water may lose the Crudity.
1655. Culpepper, etc. Riverius, X. vi. 296. Waters … wherein there is Crudity or a Mineral.
1707. Floyer, Physic. Pulse-Watch, 67. These several degrees of Crudity appears [sic] in Grapes.
1729. Shelvocke, Artillery, IV. 292. Lead, divested of its Crudity and Grossness by being purified.
b. An instance of this; also concr. (in pl.) raw products; unripe or uncooked substances.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 326. To say … that if the Crudities, Impurities, and Leprosies of Metals were cured, they would become Gold.
1676. Etheredge, Man of Mode, I. i. In Fee with the Doctors to sell green Fruit to the Gentry, that the Crudities may breed Diseases.
1870. H. Macmillan, Bible Teach., v. 99. How to convert these crudities of nature into nutritious vegetables.
2. Phys. Of food: The state of being imperfectly digested, or the quality of being indigestible; indigestion; also, in old physiology, imperfect ‘concoction’ of the humours; undigested (or indigestible) matter in the stomach; pl. imperfectly ‘concocted’ humours. ? Obs.
1533. Elyot, Cast. Helthe, IV. i. (1541), 74 b. Cruditie is a vycious concoction of thynges receyued, they not beinge holly or perfitely altered.
1601. Holland, Pliny, II. 259. The crudities or raw humors lying in the stomack, which cause loathing and abhorring of meat.
1670. Cotton, Espernon, III. XI. 536. I do not think any stomach in the world, but his, could have digested so much crudity.
1684. trans. Bonet’s Merc. Compit., III. 87. Crudities are the cause of all Catarrhs.
1785. Reid, Int. Powers, IV. iv. 387. Crudities and indigestion are said to give uneasy dreams.
1860. Emerson, Cond. Life, Fate, Wks. (Bohn), II. 327. A crudity in the blood will appear in the argument.
fig. 1611. (title) Coryats Crudities, hastily gobled vp in fiue Moneths trauells in France, Sauoy, Italy [etc.].
b. The firmness or hardness of morbid matter before it is ‘ripe’; the early or immature stage of a disease.
1727–51. Chambers, Crudity sometimes denotes that state of a disease, wherein the morbific matter is of such bulk, figure, cohesion, mobility, or inactivity, as creates or increases the disease.
1847. Todd, Cycl. Anat., IV. 107/2. When tuberculous matter has existed … in the state of firmness or ‘crudity.’
3. Of mental products, etc. (also transf. of persons): The condition of being immature, undeveloped, ill-digested.
1869. Farrar, Fam. Speech, i. (1873), 7. Languages in every stage of crudity or development.
1879. Gladstone, Glean., I. 49. He gave no signs of crudity, never affected knowledge he did not possess.
b. (with a and pl.) An instance of crudity; a crude idea, statement, piece of literary work, etc.
1652. Bp. Hall, Rem. Wks. (1660), 152. They have nothing in them, but cold crudities.
1710. Addison, Tatler, No. 239, ¶ 2. This Author, in the last of his Crudities, has amassed together a Heap of Quotations.
1859. Mill, Liberty, v. (1865), 67/1. Rushing into some half-examined crudity which has struck the fancy.
1879. Morley, Burke, 26. The book is full of crudities.
4. Unpolished plainness or ‘brutality’ of statement or expression: cf. CRUDE 8.
1885. Spectator, 30 May, 704/2. Nor did he recoil from Rabelaisian crudity of expression.
