Also 5–6 vylenes(se, 6–7 vilenes(se, 6 vylynesse. [f. VILE a. + -NESS.]
† 1. Foulness, filthiness, foul matter. Obs.
1495. Trevisa’s Barth. De P. R., VIII. xxviii. (Caxton), 341. Though it passe by vylenesse and fylthe, it is not defoylled.
1509. Barclay, Shyp of Folys (1570), 229. By suche vilenes disfigure they nature, Their chekes dirtie, their teeth by rustines Blacke, foule and rotten, expresseth their vilenes.
1530. Palsgr., 285/1. Vylenesse, nothyng clenly, fetardise.
1552. Huloet, Vilenes, fylth, or ordure, sordes.
2. The quality or character of being morally vile; moral depravity; baseness of character.
1526. Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W., 1531), 169 b. Secondaryly [are to be considered] the vylenesse, vnkyndnesse, & vnworthynesse of man to that loue.
1555. Bradforth, in Strype, Eccl. Mem. (1721), III. App. XLV. 128. The natural disposition of the Spaniards whose vylenes doubtles I cannot showe.
1588. Marprel. Epist. (Arb.), 32. I will so lay open your vilenes yat I wil make the very stoones in Kingstone streets shall smell of your knaueries.
1635. Life Long Meg of Westm., xviii. 46 (Hindley), I do enjoin you that … you come into the church, and there … declare to the people the vileness of your life.
a. 1677. Barrow, Wks. (1687), I. vii. 85. God being most holy and pure,… we, sensible of our corruption and vileness, may be fearfull and shy of coming near unto him.
1693. Creech, in Dryden’s Juvenal, xiii. (1697), 318. He expatiates on the Vileness of the Times.
1740–2. Richardson, Pamela (1785), III. x. 45. Her Vileness could hardly be equalled by the worst Actions of the most abandoned Procuress.
1769. Lett. Junius, i. (1788), 37. Judges are superior to the vileness of pecuniary corruption.
1850. Tennyson, In Mem., li. 4. Is there no baseness we would hide? No inner vileness that we dread?
1868. E. Edwards, Ralegh, I. i. 8. One of the very few worthies who had redeemed the vileness of a reign.
1880. E. White, Cert. Relig., 95. The vileness of the temper which affronts the Eternal Mercy by the response of a scoffing criticism.
b. An instance of this.
1863. Pusey, in Oxf. Lent. Serm., 14. When years of life have been spent in such preference of self, self-will, ambition, vilenesses to God.
1872. Ruskin, Eagle’s N., § 79. Ghastly convulsions in thought, and vilenesses in action.
3. Low or mean condition.
1549. Coverdale, etc., Erasm. Par. Rom., xv. 41. He therfore submitted hym self to our vilenes, to thend he would by lytle and lytle exalt vs to a hygher state.
4. Extreme badness or worthlessness.
1723. T. Thomas, in Portland Papers (Hist. MSS. Comm.), VI. 74. One [picture] which, upon account of the vileness of the artist, ought not to have been placed there.
1807. Anna M. Porter, Hungar. Bro., iv. (1832), 40. While she plied the modelling-sticks, or the chisel, with equal vileness.
