profane

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

Under the First Amendment, anyone in the U.S. has the right to engage in peaceful protest, which can include yelling, using profane language, videotaping officers and following them in a car, legal experts say.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 27, 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

In 1431, the ecumenical Council of Basel ordered the deans and rectors of churches to expel "frivolities" and "profane abuses" from holy buildings, but implicitly allowed them to take place in the squares outside.

From Salon ● Dec. 24, 2024

On this scroll it says that Sir Charles Baskerville had an ancestor called Sir Hugo Baskerville, who was a wild, profane and godless man.

From "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon

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

When the wind is right, the indescribable perfume of some of the world's most thoroughly fermented tidal flats profanes the air.

From Time Magazine Archive

He who profanes thy perilous threshold,—where The ancient centuries lair, And, glacier-throned, thy monarch, Winter, nods,— Let him beware!

From Myth and Romance Being a Book of Verses by Cawein, Madison Julius

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, 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

Yet the opera’s few tender moments, set to what seemed like profaned echoes of Wagner’s “Tristan,” had a warmth that was gripping.

From New York Times ● May 9, 2010

"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

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

Finally Garfield reached the scene in which Rodrigues steps on the fumie, profaning the God he believes in and renouncing the faith he has come halfway across the world to preach.

From New York Times ● Nov. 21, 2016

Before that takes place, the neighbouring nations shall assemble themselves against Jerusalem, with the desire of profaning it, and of enjoying a pleasant spectacle.

From Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, Vol. 1 by Hengstenberg, Ernst Wilhelm