Desecrate vs Profane - What's the difference?
desecrate | profane |
(transitive) To profane or violate the sacredness or sanctity of something.
* 1916 — James Whitcomb Riley, The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley ,
(transitive) To remove the consecration from someone or something; to deconsecrate.
(transitive) To inappropriately change.
* 1913 — William Alexander Lambeth and Warren H. Manning,
* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)
, title=(The China Governess)
, chapter=Foreword Desecrated.
*1842 , (Edgar Allan Poe), ‘The Myster of Marie Rogêt’:
*:Here are the very nooks where the unwashed most abound—here are the temples most desecrate .
Unclean; ritually impure; unholy, desecrating a holy place or thing.
* Sir Walter Raleigh
Not sacred or holy, unconsecrated; relating to non-religious matters, secular.
* I. Disraeli
* Gibbon
Treating sacred things with contempt, disrespect, irreverence, or undue familiarity; blasphemous, impious. Hence, specifically; Irreverent in language; taking the name of God in vain; given to swearing; blasphemous; as, a profane person, word, oath, or tongue.
* Bible, 1 Timothy 1:9
A person or thing that is profane.
* 1796 , Matthew Lewis, The Monk , Folio Society 1985, p. 244:
(freemasonry) A person not a Mason.
To violate, as anything sacred; to treat with abuse, irreverence, obloquy, or contempt; to desecrate; to pollute; as, to profane the name of God; to profane the Scriptures, or the ordinance of God.
* 1851 ,
To put to a wrong or unworthy use; to make a base employment of; to debase; to abuse; to defile.
In transitive terms the difference between desecrate and profane
is that desecrate is To inappropriately change while profane is to put to a wrong or unworthy use; to make a base employment of; to debase; to abuse; to defile.As a noun profane is
a person or thing that is profane.desecrate
English
Verb
Volume 10.
- It's reform -- reform! You're going to 'turn over a new leaf,' and all that, and sign the pledge, and quit cigars, and go to work, and pay your debts, and gravitate back into Sunday-school, where you can make love to the preacher's daughter under the guise of religion, and desecrate the sanctity of the innermost pale of the church by confessions at Class of your 'thorough conversion'!
Thomas Jefferson as an Architect and a Designer of Landscapes.
- A subsequent owner has desecrated the main hall and robbed it of its grandeur by putting in a floor just beneath the circular windows in order to make an upper room over the hall.
citation, passage=Everything a living animal could do to destroy and to desecrate bed and walls had been done. […] A canister of flour from the kitchen had been thrown at the looking-glass and lay like trampled snow over the remains of a decent blue suit with the lining ripped out which lay on top of the ruin of a plastic wardrobe.}}
Adjective
(en adjective)profane
English
Adjective
(en-adj)- Nothing is profane that serveth to holy things.
- profane authors
- The profane wreath was suspended before the shrine.
- a profane person, word, oath, or tongue
Synonyms
* (obscene) vulgar, inappropriate, obscene, debased, uncouth, offensive, ignoble, mean, lewd * secular * temporal * worldly * unsanctified * unhallowed * unholy * irreligious * irreverent * ungodly * wicked * godless * impiousAntonyms
* holy * sacredNoun
(en noun)- The nuns were employed in religious duties established in honour of St Clare, and to which no profane was ever admitted.
Verb
(profan)- With one mind, their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man’s knife, as he carved the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that for the world they would have profaned that moment with the slightest observation, even upon so neutral a topic as the weather.