These words refer to expression or behaviour that is concerned with sexuality or bodily functions. Suggestive is the milder of these words, emphasizing not frankness on these matters so much as allusions or innuendoes that are considered to be in bad taste: suggestive motion-picture advertisements that are more titillating than the films they publicize. Even so distant an approach to frankness as this word can imply was once condemned by an earlier age; now the word can be used in disapproval of any leering indirectness about sex, even those cases where frankness itself might now be thought quite innocuous: the sort of parental lecture on the facts of life that is, its embarrassed delivery, bewildering and suggestive rather than dispassionate and informative.

Risqué suggests a closer approach to frankness on sexual matters in that boldness of allusion is stressed. Except for someone who is extremely strait-laced, this word has fewer legitimate uses in today’s more tolerant atmosphere, since many kinds of direct references to sex (much less glancing allusions of any sort) are not thought particularly bold: It was once thought risqué for a woman to dine along with a man in his flat; gentlemen who traded risqué jokes once the ladies had retired after dinner.

Off-colour has been similarly affected, although its vagueness still permits its application, particularly to jokes of any sort that hinge on sexual matters: an off-colour joke that was currently making the rounds of the girls?dormitory. But "dirty joke" is a more common description of this kind of humour.

The remaining words are not restricted to sexuality alone. Of these, earthy is the broadest in application. If once it was disapproving for something coarse or crude in reference to sexual and bodily functions, now it may be descriptively neutral or even approving: the earthy humour of Chaucer and Shakespeare. The word may even suggest a sentimental nostalgia for the supposedly simpler and more direct life that man lived in earlier, less complex times: the trend to urbanization that has robbed man of his earthy acceptance of the natural processes of birth, copulation, death and decay.

Racy can apply to accounts that are erotic, pornographic or earthy , but in this case the word suggests fast-paced action and a linguistic forcefulness gained through frank and direct expressions: a racy book about marital infidelity in the suburbs. When racy applies to actions it can indicate earthy behaviour that is marked by high-spirited energy and linguistic gusto: a character whose racy , pungent speech and erotic prowess would have put Don Juan to shame.

Both rabelaisian and scatological emphasize earthy expression or behaviour. Rabelaisian , like racy , indicates high-spirited zest, but stresses with sexual and excretory functions. The word refers to the French writer, Rabelais, whose work reflected such concerns: the Rabelaisian wit of many contemporary novelists; a Rabelaisian rascal who delighted in playing obscene practical jokes on his friends. Scatological is a word of neutral description for a fascination with excrement or with the excretory functions. It is useful in discriminating work with this emphasis from other possibly obscene material that is focused on sexual functions: the scatological emphasis in the works of Jonathan Swift; soldiers whose language is larded with obscene and scatological references.