sacrilegious

adjective

sac·ri·le·gious ˌsa-krə-ˈli-jəs

also

: committing or characterized by sacrilege : having or showing a lack of proper respect for a sacred person, place, or object

sacrilegious acts

It is difficult for religiously committed persons to acknowledge that their sacred texts are prone to sacrilegious uses.—

Mary C. Boys

—often used in an exaggerated way in contexts unrelated to religion

It would be sacrilegious to cut down such beautiful trees.

Chilling your red wines may seem sacrilegious to some, and downright odd to others.—

Tess Rose Lampert

sacrilegiously adverb

In the center of the rich red carpet was a black and gold Louis Quinze table, a lovely antique, now sacrilegiously desecrated with marks of glasses and the scars of cigar-stumps. —

Arthur Conan Doyle

sacrilegiousness noun

… these examples of … insensitivity to (if not sacrilegiousness or profanation of) the deeply held beliefs of some 200 million-plus Americans. —

Quin Hilyer

Examples of sacrilegious in a Sentence

a sacrilegious, obscene joke—and told in church at that!

Recent Examples on the Web

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But the French debate over whether to show images of Muhammad, which many Muslims view as sacrilegious, is still being waged today. —

Colette Davidson, The Christian Science Monitor, 8 Jan. 2025 Griswold—whose father, once the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, consecrated the denomination’s first openly gay bishop—treats the pastors generously, though gingerly, constructing from their lowest moments an affecting study of sacred life in sacrilegious times. —

Dan Piepenbring, Harper's Magazine, 2 Aug. 2024 The cartoon images deeply offended many Muslims, who saw them as sacrilegious. —

Tom Nouvian and Samuel Petrequin, Los Angeles Times, 20 Dec. 2024 This declaration should not be mistaken for vain clickbait or an attempt to be sacrilegious. —

Dr. Marcus Collins, Forbes, 12 Dec. 2024 See all Example Sentences for sacrilegious