profane

Capra achieved many of his greatest successes in the employ of Columbia Pictures studio head Harry Cohn, a profane, hard-boiled character who operated by instinct and ruled by fear.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 27, 2026

The author also notes a telling detail: Abolitionists such as Douglass often chose to speak on July 5, not the Fourth itself, regarding the official celebration as compromised, even profane.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026

On a never-ending feed we watch the cute and profane, sleepwalking toward an emotional state beyond shock as entertainment: the banality of passive consumption.

From Slate ● May 12, 2026

An opera disguised as an oratorio to get around the church’s ban on profane opera, the impolitic work about past and present is formed as the conflict between extravagance and sanctity.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 1, 2025

It seems profane somehow—the world clean, the air warm—when scores of young men lay cold in their coffins, waiting to return to the earth.

From "An Ember in the Ashes" by Sabaa Tahir

It reads: “He that violates his oath profanes the divinity of faith itself.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 15, 2022

It profanes and pulverizes any claim she might have on representing the interests of mothers and children.

From The New Yorker ● Jun. 1, 2018

It is just not true that all today's modern art despises or profanes the past.

From The Guardian ● Apr. 18, 2013

The climax comes when Charlie puts the house up for sale, profanes their devotions, and triumphantly vilifies mother.

From Time Magazine Archive

Still the Chevalier profanes not that pure form with his unhallowed touch; perchance some unseen power, the guardian of spotless innocence, restrains him.

From Venus in Boston; A Romance of City Life by George Thompson

This is both a twilight and a twilight zone; every virtue is a simulation of itself, a hollow or profaned image.

From The New Yorker ● May 21, 2019

All that is solid melts into air; all that is holy is profaned.

From New York Times ● Dec. 10, 2015

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”

From The Guardian ● Aug. 7, 2015

When the call comes from Chau that set this scene in motion, as Mike plays with Kaylee, we feel with him how his one last standing temple has been profaned.

From Salon ● Jul. 23, 2012

"The High Septon claims we profaned Baelor's Sept with blood,,after lying to him about our intent."

From "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin

This bears mentioning since Hargitay opened Monday’s Emmys telecast by performing “I Love TV Screens,” profaning Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll” in doing so.

From Salon ● Sep. 15, 2026

And of course there were important rules about the worship of Yahweh, including loving him, fearing him, emulating him, and not profaning his name.

From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023

“Some have even claimed that only by being here, by my presence, I am traumatizing the Kercher family again, and profaning Meredith’s memory. They are wrong.”

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 15, 2019

This task is made more difficult by the novelist’s mustache-twirling contempt for profaning fiction with reality.

From The New Yorker ● Sep. 17, 2018

As 'every one' was out of town perhaps the servants, in the extravagance of their leisure, were profaning the tables.

From A London Life and Other Tales by Henry James