From the mid-seventeenth century onward, it began to take on a pejorative aspect: "having a common and offensively mean character, coarsely commonplace; lacking in refinement or good taste; uncultured; ill bred".
[citation needed] In the Victorian age, vulgarity broadly described many activities, such as wearing ostentatious clothing.
In a George Eliot novel, one character could be vulgar for talking about money, a second because he criticizes the first for doing so, and a third for being fooled by the excessive refinement of the second.
In George Meredith's Beauchamp's Career, an heiress does not wish to make the commonplace statement that she is "engaged", nor "betrothed", "affianced", or "plighted".
One can see that what is considered taboo or obscene revolves around a few dimensions of human experience that there is a logic behind dirty word usage.