crude

Formscruder, crudest

1. 1
   noununcountableabbreviationellipsis

   Ellipsis of crude oil.

   Refineries turn crude into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

   Global demand for crude surged after the unusually harsh winter.

   Note

   A noun clipped from crude oil, with the oil left understood: refineries buy crude, and the price of crude rises. It is usually a mass noun, so it takes no article in general statements and is counted in barrels, as in The Economist's "the first barrels of crude" (2013). The plural crudes appears when different kinds are being compared.

2. 2
   adjective

   Showing a lack of tact or good taste; rude, vulgar, or offensive.

   The comedian's crude humor alienated much of the audience.

   He made a crude gesture across the crowded room.

   Similarvulgar, coarse, blunt, gross, earthy

   Oppositetasteful, refined, polite, decent

3. 3
   adjective

   Marked by simplicity, especially when made roughly rather than carefully or expertly.

   The prototype was a crude assembly of wood and tangled wire.

   Early humans shaped crude tools by chipping away at stone.

   Similarrough, primitive, rudimentary, rude

   Oppositesophisticated, refined, polished, elaborate

   Note

   The judgment softens when the thing described is a figure rather than an object. A crude estimate or a crude guess is not shoddy work. It is a deliberately rough first approximation, offered without apology. Applied to a shelter or a tool, the word leans harder toward criticism, and rudimentary or primitive are the gentler choices.

4. 4
   adjective

   In a natural, untreated state, before any refining or processing has taken place.

   Traders dealt in crude latex tapped directly from the trees.

   The mill receives crude wool that still carries dirt and grease.

   Similarraw, unprocessed, unrefined

   Oppositerefined, processed, treated

   Note

   This sense stays closest to the Latin root. Crūdus meant "raw, bloody, uncooked", and English raw comes from the same Indo-European root, so the word's most common synonym is a distant cousin. Today the sense lives mainly in trade and industry (crude oil, crude latex, crude wool). There it marks a material before refining and carries none of the criticism found in the word's other meanings.

5. 5
   adjective

   Plain and undisguised; lacking anything that would soften or conceal it.

   The memo laid out the layoffs in crude, unsparing detail.

   Her crude assessment of the budget left no room for comfort.

   Similarobvious, plain, undisguised, unadorned

   Oppositeveiled, subtle

6. 6
   noununcountable

   Any substance in its natural, unprocessed state.

   The mill grinds the crude into a fine powder for further treatment.

   Each shipment of crude from the salt flats is weighed before it enters the plant.

7. 7
   adjective

   In grammar, relating to the stem of a word before any inflectional endings are added.

   Students learn to find the crude root before adding personal endings.

   Each entry pairs the crude form with its inflected variants.

   Oppositeinflected

   Note

   A grammarian's term for a word's base before any ending is attached. The crude form is what remains once the inflections marking tense, number, case or person are stripped away. It names the same thing as stem, and it keeps the word's core image of material not yet worked: here, a word not yet shaped by grammar.

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