What's the difference between holy and unholy?

Holy


Definition:

  • (superl.) Set apart to the service or worship of God; hallowed; sacred; reserved from profane or common use; holy vessels; a holy priesthood.
  • (superl.) Spiritually whole or sound; of unimpaired innocence and virtue; free from sinful affections; pure in heart; godly; pious; irreproachable; guiltless; acceptable to God.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The next day on his blog he called the job "the Holy Grail of animation gigs".
  • (2) The Kalachakra Puja takes place in the eastern state of Bihar at the holy Bodhgaya site, where the Buddha gained enlightenment.
  • (3) Most of these troops are being sent to Helmand and neighbouring Kandahar where a big push against the Taliban is expected in September, after the holy month of Ramadan.
  • (4) There's apparently a 30-seat cinema in Paris that's played The Holy Grail for three decades.
  • (5) Islamist militants have attacked Iraq's largest oil refinery in the city of Baiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, as Iran raised the prospect of direct military intervention to protect Shia holy sites.
  • (6) The Holy Father has now decided that my resignation will take effect today, 25 February 2013, and that he will appoint an apostolic administrator to govern the archdiocese in my place until my successor as archbishop is appointed.
  • (7) Speaking in 2001 at the launch of Death in Holy Orders , her 11th Dalgliesh novel, James explained that her success was founded on the belief that plot could never make up for poor writing and that authors should always focus on the reader.
  • (8) The staggering figure – one of the worst bombings in 13 years of war in Iraq – has cast a pall on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan and which begins on Wednesday in Iraq .
  • (9) And not just the Muslim holy sites, he adds; Palestinians are more visible in the west of the city than previously.
  • (10) Boys from King Edward VI grammar school will lay oblations inside Holy Trinity church, while the Coventry Corps of Drums prepares to lead a "people's parade" towards Bancroft Gardens, where the River Avon widens, and where – if you're lucky – you might see a swan or two cruise by.
  • (11) O’Brien’s successor as archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Leo Cushley, said: “I am confident that the decision of the Holy Father is fair, equitable and proportionate.
  • (12) Has Net-a-Porter found the holy grail of 21st-century fashion?
  • (13) Hitler chose to stage Nazi party rallies in the city due to its connections to the Holy Roman Empire and the Nuremberg laws, which stripped Jews of their German citizenship, were passed here.
  • (14) It is the England that then prime minister John Major vowed would never vanish in a famous 1993 speech: “Long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – ‘old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’.” Major was mining Orwell’s wartime essay The Lion and the Unicorn, whose tone was one of reassurance – the national culture will survive, despite everything: “The gentleness, the hypocrisy, the thoughtlessness, the reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms will remain, along with the suet puddings and the misty skies.” Orwell and Major were both asserting the strength of a national culture at times when Britishness – for both men basically Englishness – was felt to be under threat from outside dangers (war, integration into Europe).
  • (15) Quite a number of people brought up in the emotional straitjackets of the English upper classes found blessed relief in the permission the Holy Spirit gave them to weep or laugh and gibber and faint in public.
  • (16) In the mid-1990s, when the movement's influence on HTB was at its height, I visited a Chelsea church run by Nicky Lee, one of the men who converted Welby at Cambridge, and when the Holy Spirit started knocking people down, I'd hear the distinct rattle of pearls when the young women fainted to the floor.
  • (17) The narrative drivers are pretty slack – improbable dialogue ("I'm a very wealthy man, Miss Steele, and I have expensive and absorbing hobbies"); lame characterisation; irritating tics (a constant war between Steele's "subconscious", which is always fainting or putting on half-moon glasses, and her "inner goddess", who is forever pouting and stamping); and an internal monologue that goes like this … "Holy hell, he's hot!
  • (18) The fear that Israel was planning to alter the status of the holy place Arabs call Al-Haram Al-Sharif and the Jews the Temple Mount set off the violence.
  • (19) Recipes for " tomato burgers " (bestowing this fruit sandwich with the holy title of "burger" is an affront to cows everywhere), help on undergoing a " friendship divorce ", extortionate travel guides … Goop covers a lot of ground.
  • (20) The IAEA team is likely to visit an underground enrichment site near the holy city of Qom, 80 miles south of Tehran, which is carved into a mountain as protection from possible airstrikes.

Unholy


Definition:

  • (a.) Not holy; unhallowed; not consecrated; hence, profane; wicked; impious.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Levinson's film, to be titled Black Mass, will be based on the New York Times bestseller Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob , by Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill.
  • (2) They also loved smoking pot, and – with Buck Clayton – were inseparable on the tours across the States, calling themselves “the Unholy Three”.
  • (3) The Voluptuous Horror ... are purported to be converts to a movement known as "anti-naturalism" and they've got an album bearing that phrase, but they don't sound especially transgressive or perverse, which is fine – just think of their music as a way in, an access point, to an art netherworld so out-there it prompted one onlooker to hail the band's live extravaganza as "an unholy stage show of such immense countercultural gravity that I just want to scream 'Hail Satan' at the top of my lungs".
  • (4) In France, though, Rabelais portrayed saints as fools, and coined the phrase: “The wise may be instructed by a fool.” In his great book on Rabelais, Mikhail Bakhtin observes that: “In the eyes of Rabelais’s fool, truth presupposes freedom from personal material interests, from the unholy gift of managing family and personal affairs, but the language of this foolish truth is at the same time earthly and material.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Illustration by Max Cabanes Modernity and postmodernity have banished this role of Fool.
  • (5) Passenger Daisy McAndrew said she had been caught in the "unholy mess" at Gatwick as she tried to fly to Barcelona for work.
  • (6) One passenger, Daisy McAndrew, said she had been caught in the "unholy mess" at Gatwick as she tried to fly to Barcelona for work.
  • (7) There, an unholy trio of identikit brewing giants peddling variations on a Budweiser theme dominated the market.
  • (8) It’s the unholy marriage of that soulless debate culture that works so well in Britain, transplanted to a nation with no social safety net and half a billion guns.
  • (9) The coalition's NHS reforms, the biggest shakeup of the health service in 60 years, are a "damaging … unholy mess" that will need overhauling in five years' time, the editors of three leading healthcare publications claim.
  • (10) This is part of what Labour has described as the “unholy alliance” between the SNP and Conservatives where both think they benefit from talking up the chances of Sturgeon’s success.
  • (11) An early instance, says the TUC, of the kind of unholy alliance between lawyers, police, government and News International that exemplifies the "malign and corrosive" influence of Rupert Murdoch on the British establishment.
  • (12) I fear an unholy alliance that could be tempted to scupper a deal.
  • (13) Thus the Labour leader realised his speech would see him clobbered from the Labour right and the Labour left in unholy unprecedented alliance.
  • (14) I fear an unholy alliance that could be tempted to scupper it.” He is confident that Malta can set the divorce proceedings successfully in motion, but fears disaster at a late stage.
  • (15) When asked if he would meet with the Pope during his trip to the US , Trump replied: “Well, the pope believes in global warming, you do know that.” Later he noted: “I like the pope, a lot of personality, good man.” Negative opinions of the pope ran strong in Philadelphia this week, as people declared the pope’s pleas in his encyclical as pagan, anti-American, dangerous, unholy and untruthful.
  • (16) Lower castes were forced into menial or unholy jobs such as cleaning the sewers or working with leather.
  • (17) That's enough for the moment to control Washington outcomes - as epitomized by the unholy trinity that saved the NSA in the House last week: Pelosi, John Bohener and the Obama White House - but it is clearly not enough to stem the rapidly changing tide of public opinion.
  • (18) "This case serves as a classic example of how our justice system can be abused by an unholy alliance between courts and prosecutors," said a statement from Polanski's lawyers.
  • (19) The plain blue wrapper of the Tory manifesto might look very different at first glance from its colourful Soviet-chic Labour counterpart, yet at heart these are two parish magazines, or songs of praise, trying – a little too hard – to persuade us of the righteousness of two unholy political parties.
  • (20) There are two excellent examples in the episode at hand: when Nanny West attacks baby Sibby for being the "cross-breed" product of an unholy union between a chauffeur and an aristocrat; and when Lady Rose becomes a walking metaphor by cross-dressing as a maid.