scandalosity

English

Etymology

From scandalous +‎ -osity.

Noun

scandalosity (countable and uncountable, plural scandalosities)

1. (rare, uncountable) The quality of being scandalous.

   Synonym: scandalousness

   • 1923, Edwin Baird, Fay, New York, N.Y.: Edward J. Clode, page 57:

     Miss Somebody, who also sings, got greenly jealous, and as she couldn’t rap Fay’s voice she knocked her face; and one can swing a hammer there with cruel scandalosity.

   • 1976 July 30, “Tiny nation big on Olympics”, in The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ken., page C 5:

     Our sports are far from — how you say? — scandalosity?

   • 1977, Marta Ester Sánchez, Three Latin-American Novelists in Search of Lo Americano: A Productive Failure, pages 119–120:

     And though we may concede that "Axolotl" is a narrative whose outrageous scandalosity to our everyday world is surely beyond dispute, we must also acknowledge that it has rules of its own: […]

   • 2003, Wendy Williams, Karen Hunter, Wendy’s Got the Heat, Atria Books, →ISBN, page 91:

     I expanded my Dishing the Dirt to my night show where celebrities would frequent the studio for interviews and I developed my style of high drama and scandalosity.

   • 2008 July 17, Patt Morrison, “Rating the scandals”, in Los Angeles Times, page A21:

     Rating the scandals […] Let’s create a Scandalosity Rating System, with units everyone understands.

2. (rare, countable) Something scandalous.
   • c. 1889?, Dramatic and Musical Criticisms‎^[1]:

     “What a scandalosity!” for an outraged sense of decorum prevailed over his use of sane English.

   • 1900 March 6, “Shapely Chorus Girl Lashes Dave Warfield. Frankie Bailey Attacks Comedian with a Rawhide. Is Put out of the Company—Court Martial on the Weber & Fields Stage Decides That She Must Go at Once — Bald-Headed Man Began the Row.”, in The Leavenworth Times, Leavenworth, Kan., page 5:

     “What a scandalosity!” he exclaimed a moment later, as he met Miss Bailey in the wings. “You ought to be ashamed of myself!”

   • 1907 November 8, “Maritime Murmurs”, in The Maritime Review: An Illustrated Weekly Journal, volume XV, number 195, page 194:

     Still, when a miners’ agent lays himself out to consider the scandalosities of life, it isn’t for mere newspaper folk to offer a word on the subject.

   • 1927, Kathleen Coyle, Shule Agra, New York, N.Y.: E. P. Dutton & Company, page 118:

     I’m forever whitewashing after them, whitewashing off the scandalosities they do be scrabbling on the privy walls.

   • 1932, The Adventures of the Black Duse, Judd & Detweiler, Inc., page 209:

     But jest yo’ lemme tell yo’ that knocker on the front door is a plumb scandalosity, an’ I isn’t gwine do yo’ wuck.

   • 2004, Nikolay Gogol, translated by Robert A. Maguire, Dead Souls, Penguin Books, page 210:

     Please permit me to tell you that I have never yet indulged in scandalosities of that kind.