1. Unbecomingly, unsuitably, improperly; = INDECENTLY adv.
1563. Homilies, II. Sacrament, I. ¶ 2. Lest … this comfortable medicine of the soule vndecently receaued, tende to our greater harme.
1577. trans. Bullinger’s Decades (1592), 637. Hee ought to be free, least the image of God should seeme to bee bond vndecently.
1628. T. Spencer, Logick, 171. We may not thinke, that he hath omitted it for that is to charge him vndecently:… and against reason.
1671. Grew, Anat. Plants, iii. App. § 4. The Branches whereof … must needs by their own weight, and that of their Fruit, undecently fall.
1716. M. Davies, Athen. Brit., II. 96. He made early Applications to King Henry’s Queen Dowager, who comply’d with him a little undecently.
2. Unhandsomely, inelegantly.
1587. Presentmt., in Essex Rev., XV. 43. The church is undecently and unsemely and filthily kept.
1644. Laud, Hist. Troub. & Trials (1695), xxxii. 310. I say so too, or else my Chappel must lye more undecently than is fit to express.
1664. J. Webb, Stone-Heng (1725), 38. They are most undecently high, saith Scamozzi.
1673. Lady’s Call., I. v. § 32. Shall she take no care how sordidly, how undecently she appear when the King of Kings gives audience?
3. With impropriety or indecency.
1589. Puttenham, Eng. Poesie, III. xxiii. (Arb.), 275. It was not vndecently spoken…, for it was the cleaneliest excuse he could make.
1603. Florio, Montaigne, III. v. 522. I know a hundred Cuckolds, which are so, honestlie and little vndecently.
1655. Stanley, Hist. Philos., III. (1687), 92/2. Another time she offered to go to a publick show attired undecently.
1689. Burnet, Trav., iii. (1750), 140. The great Libertinage that is so undecently practised by most Sorts of People at Venice.
