English

Adjective

turpid ‎(comparative more turpid, superlative most turpid)

1. Foul; base; wicked; morally depraved.
   • 1853, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, My Novel

     He seeks in vain to occupy his days with rural pursuits,--he to whom the excitements of a metropolis, with all its corruption and its vices, were the sole sources of the turpid stream that he called "pleasure."

   • 1856, Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, as translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling

     […] things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them.

   • 1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

     I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t'aimais, je t'aimais!

Related terms

• turpidly
• turpitude
• turpitudinous

Anagrams

• putrid