Impudence is the absence of decorum, shame or restraint . Whoever acts impudently, in this way, does so without shame .
For example: “The minister delivered the bribes to the senators with an impudence that is astonishing,” “The impudence of the businessmen who exploit workers is scandalous,” “Publishing a photograph of that caliber is truly impudence.”
Impudence is usually related to obscenity . The impudent person has no modesty, which is why he behaves without any type of restraint or reserve : that is, he is exposed.
Suppose some young people undress on a public beach in front of everyone present. So, without clothes, they walk along the shore and have fun in the sea. For many, these people act impudently, violating social norms of decorum. Even this impudence could be considered a crime since it is linked to exhibitionism.
Take the case of a trade unionist who got rich in a shady way. This man gives journalistic interviews in his mansion, posing for photos in various environments of his luxurious home. He also travels around the city in a latest model sports car and always wears suits from the most famous designers. Although he cannot explain how he obtains the resources to support such a lifestyle, the union leader shows himself without hesitation , possibly convinced that he enjoys impunity. This impudence irritates society.
Although many Spanish-speaking people know the meaning of this term, it is not a very common one in everyday speech, but rather it tends to appear more frequently in literature and journalism. For this reason, we are going to explore some of its most common synonyms, to try to understand their meaning in greater depth: dishonesty, impudence, immorality, indecency, shamelessness, debauchery, obscenity, rudeness, concupiscence, procacity, impudence and impudence . Regarding its antonyms, we can mention decency and modesty .
We are faced with a concept that is somewhat difficult to define definitively and immutably, since regardless of the centuries of moral imposition by different political and religious systems, there are still many people who act spontaneously, at the same time today. outside the precepts, not with bad intentions but with the objective of being free. And here we enter another term that makes the definition more complex: freedom.
If we ask ourselves what freedom is, the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy gives us more than a dozen meanings headed by the following: "the power that human beings have by nature to act as they wish or not to do so, since they are responsible." of their actions. Now, going to a beach and taking off your clothes to enjoy the water in its natural state should be part of that faculty, but we well know that this is not the case and this contradicts the idea that a government spreads when it assures that "its people enjoy freedom."
At what point do we lose the freedom to settle for a fragment of it? When they convince us that our freedom ends when that of our neighbor begins. Impudence implies the absence of modesty and modesty , two terms that share the meaning of "honesty" in their definitions; To respect the freedom of others, one of the best ways is honesty, and in the aforementioned case of the trade unionist who has obtained his money at the expense of the efforts of others, we can understand that this is something negative.
“La impudicia” , finally, is the title of a novel written by the French Marguerite Duras . The book was published in 1943 as “Les impudents” in its original language.