Meaning

adjective designed to incite to indecency or lust; -Margaret Mead

adjective offensive to the mind

adjective suggestive of or tending to moral looseness

originFrom Middle French obscene (modern French obscène (“indecent, obscene”)), and from its etymon Latin obscēnus, obscaenus (“inauspicious; ominous; disgusting, filthy; offensive, repulsive; indecent, lewd, obscene”). The further etymology is uncertain, but may be from ob- (prefix meaning ‘towards’) + caenum (“dirt, filth; mire, mud”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱweyn- (“to make…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0