a. [f. FOUL a. + MOUTH + -ED2.] Of persons and their utterances: Using obscene, profane, or scurrilous language.
1596. Shaks., 1 Hen. IV., III. iii. 122. Hee speakes most vilely of you, like a foule-mouth’d man as hee is, and said, hee would cudgell you.
1655. Fuller, The Church-History of Britain, IX. vii. § 17. Those foule mouth’d papers, like Blackmoors, did all look alike.
1730. A. Gordon, Maffei’s Amphith., 95. He says, Thus has one of those foul-mouth’d Poets wrote: which makes it evident, that such kind of Poetry was in use; and by calling them foul-mouth’d denotes the Character of the Satirists.
1838. Macaulay, Ess., Temple. Temple … complained, very unjustly, of Bentley’s foul-mouthed raillery.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, iv. 101. The Ephors judged rightly that this runaway soldier and foul-mouthed Ionian satirist [Archilochus] might corrupt the Spartan youth, or sow dissension in the State.
Hence Foul-mouthedness.
1834. Landor, Exam. Shaks., Wks. 1846, II. 275/1. Thou hast aggravated thy offence, William Shakspeare, by thy foul-mouthedness.
1884. The Saturday Review, LVIII. 22 Nov., 645/2. The country during these last few months has had a taste of Radical foulmouthedness and of Radical tyranny.
