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lowbrow

Pronunciation: /ˈloʊbɹaʊ/

The English word “lowbrow” has 3 meanings listed here.

adjective

  1. Unsophisticated, not intended for an audience of intelligence, education or culture.

noun

  1. Someone or something of low education or culture.
  2. An underground populist visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles area in the late 1960s, inspired by comics, punk music, graffiti, etc.

Etymology

A bahuvrihi compound of low + brow. An Americanism whose first use appears c. 1902. Refers to the (by that time discredited) pseudoscience of phrenology, which suggested that a person of low intelligence and sophistication would possess a lower brow-line than someone of greater intelligence and sophistication.

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