What's the difference between pious and profane?

Pious


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to piety; exhibiting piety; reverential; dutiful; religious; devout; godly.
  • (a.) Practiced under the pretext of religion; prompted by mistaken piety; as, pious errors; pious frauds.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) © Focus Features Where Dolly, a kind, pious, modest, anxious figure, the mother of five living and two dead children, belongs very much to the old Russia, Stiva Oblonsky, her husband, is recognisable as the caricature of a modern man.
  • (2) It is of course important that migrants are not scapegoated; but such pious deceit from comfortable middle-class commentators can only provoke the unemployed, the low-paid and the homeless.
  • (3) Still, I like to believe that these small-scale ventures, too, make some contribution to a conversation without limits or proscriptions; the sine qua non of the sort of society that knows to keep the solemn and the pious at bay.
  • (4) Many Isis fighters are newly converted, newly pious ... these men have grown a beard in three months and they don’t give Islam time to be understood.” He is tired of having to defend his religion against bigots who take these instant Islamists to be the authentic representation of Islam.
  • (5) The president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, made it a vote about his “way”, and found himself rejected by a large group of “democrat” voters – and almost completely abandoned by his long-term allies: pious Kurds.
  • (6) In that same National season, he teamed with Simon Callow (as Face) and Josie Lawrence (as Doll Common) in a co-production by Bill Alexander for the Birmingham Rep of Ben Jonson’s trickstering, two-faced masterpiece The Alchemist ; he was a comically pious Subtle in sackcloth and sandals.
  • (7) Both harangued Brian from the outset calling it "a squalid little film" and "tenth rate"; no amount of measured argument on the Pythons part would dissuade the pious double act of their firmly held belief that Life of Brian mocked Christ.
  • (8) He's obviously a true believer in democracy – which sounds rather pious, but it's a fact.
  • (9) Tories are furious and bitter at being abandoned by the Lib Dems, whom they loathe anyway as a bunch of pious creeps.
  • (10) Those who claim that conversion or rejection of faith is punishable by death are effectively - and this ought to give their pious hearts pause for reflection - usurping powers reserved solely for God.
  • (11) Burns is, according to the poet Edwin Muir, "to the respectable, a decent man; to the Rabelaisian, bawdy; to the sentimentalist, sentimental; to the socialist, a revolutionary; to the nationalist, a patriot; to the religious, pious …" So no doubt, this January at the start of referendum year , even diehard unionists will be searching around for words of his that seem to support their position and, where they can extrapolate them, sprinkling them around with abandon to salt their haggis, neeps and tatties at Burns suppers the length and breadth of the land.
  • (12) We simply cannot wait in the pious hope that short-term-minded governments and enterprises will save us There is a clear answer to the question of each country’s reasonable share, based on a permissible quantum of emissions per capita that never threatens the perilous 2C mean temperature increase that would profoundly and irreversibly affect all life on earth.
  • (13) The reticent, pious, even priggish character was too alien, possibly repellant, for the writer and director of the 1999 film version, Patricia Rozema, who drew on Austen's letters to fabricate another creature altogether.
  • (14) Against this background it is very simple to make such pious and ill-considered statements as, “If they don’t want to go to jail, they shouldn’t break the law!” Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘We represent only 2.4% of the Australian population yet account for more than 25% of the prison population.’ Photograph: AAP Against this background, it is very simple to impose policies for Indigenous Australians that do not signal any sense of belief in our humanity and own capacity to rise above the challenges we are confronted by.
  • (15) What we have too in Sister Cristina is the singing nun as a cultural idea: the pious, virginal creature emerging from behind strict convent walls to charm the world with the power of her voice.
  • (16) Early speculation suggested the twice-divorced businessman – who once cited the verse “two Corinthians” rather than the correct “second Corinthians” during his campaign and said he had never sought forgiveness for his sins – could not capture the vote of the pious.
  • (17) Like The Guard, Calvary is tartly, tightly scripted; unlike it, it's a pious piece of work, a serious investigation of expiation.
  • (18) This pious art lover could have a career in slapstick if she wants, for her comic destruction of a work of art bears comparison with Rowan Atkinson giving Whistler's Mother a badly drawn cartoon face in the film Bean .
  • (19) Sometimes we are not quite sure that this way of life is pious enough.
  • (20) "I saw Jonathan, who comes over as a very nice, humble, pious person," said Selby.

Profane


Definition:

  • (a.) Not sacred or holy; not possessing peculiar sanctity; unconsecrated; hence, relating to matters other than sacred; secular; -- opposed to sacred, religious, or inspired; as, a profane place.
  • (a.) Unclean; impure; polluted; unholy.
  • (a.) Treating sacred things with contempt, disrespect, irreverence, or undue familiarity; irreverent; impious.
  • (a.) Irreverent in language; taking the name of God in vain; given to swearing; blasphemous; as, a profane person, word, oath, or tongue.
  • (a.) 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.
  • (a.) To put to a wrong or unworthy use; to make a base employment of; to debase; to abuse; to defile.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Perhaps he modified his language for the NY Times reporter, but the more likely explanation is that his swearing added nothing and was therefore omitted by the writer or edited out; in America, even in liberal New York, profanities still need to be argued into print.
  • (2) Extensive research among the Afghan National Army – 68 focus groups – and US military personnel alike concluded: "One group sees the other as a bunch of violent, reckless, intrusive, arrogant, self-serving profane, infidel bullies hiding behind high technology; and the other group [the US soldiers] generally views the former as a bunch of cowardly, incompetent, obtuse, thieving, complacent, lazy, pot-smoking, treacherous, and murderous radicals.
  • (3) Throughout his life, Dad observed the rule that profanity – effing and blinding as he called it – should be confined to workplaces and other all-male venues where men gathered outside the earshot of women and children.
  • (4) McQueen told this tale several times – the words varied from “McQueen was here” to more profane messages, between tellings – and so, years later, Anderson & Sheppard asked the prince’s valet for the suits of that era back, in order to examine the linings.
  • (5) The phychological aspects of language show an antithesis between learned and profane languages.
  • (6) A few years back, a survey of 3,000 11-year-olds revealed that nine out of 10 parents swear in front of their children, and the average kid heard six different expletives per week (whoever said profanity was bad for your vocabulary?).
  • (7) "Not just because it's wrong to expect officers to endure profanities, but it's also because of the experience of the culprits.
  • (8) Here, in the profane world of anti-music, I could be a hater and say: "This is where the rock'n'roll dream dies.
  • (9) This research examined 160 college students' impressions of an audiotape of a female counselor who used profanity with either a male or female client who did or did not use profanity.
  • (10) Inside the cinema-like forum, all was concentrated silence punctuated by an occasional profanity or a murmur of "My God, North lied all along" from the readers.
  • (11) Effects of counselor's profanity and subject's religiosity on acquisition of lecture content and behavioral compliance were investigated.
  • (12) She was praised by many but also criticised harshly as a result of this exhibition, as her unapologetic nudity was seen by many as downright profane.
  • (13) You expect movie ratings to tell you whether a film contains nudity, sex, profanity or violence.
  • (14) One profanity-ridden post concluded with: "John Oliver told me to do this."
  • (15) Motion pictures were not born in religious practice, but instead are a totally profane offspring of capitalism and technology,” writes Paul Schrader in his landmark book, Transcendental Style in Film, in which he isolates two strains of religious film-making: the epics of Cecil B DeMille, presenting religion as spectacle, with teeming hordes, VistaVision, shafts of light, and strangely subdued orgies.
  • (16) She was roundly abused and Lord Carrington , the Economist and many others told her she was being profane.
  • (17) "It has mad amounts of violence, blood and profanity, and no shortage of racist and homophobic things.
  • (18) Boehner and his staff gamely tried to fend off both the specter of a shutdown and a leadership challenge from his caucus’ more belligerent culture warriors – as late as yesterday, a Boehner spokesman was assuring the press that the battle-tested speaker “wasn’t going anywhere.” No doubt, however, that a cursory look at the long train of sober spiritual leaders in his caucus lining up to deliver pointless CSPAN tantrums over the outrages of science prompted the longtime Ohio Congressman to mutter some variant of Good Lord, not this again together with a few well-chosen profanities for good measure.
  • (19) Cultural comprehensions and spirit of time are registered in numerous sacred and profane monuments of art.
  • (20) A profanity-strewn squabble with bewildered old John Motson was trotted out; Fergie time; the hairdryer treatment; the intimidation of some match officials; the trackside battles with Wenger and Benitez.