What's the difference between profane and unholy?

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.

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.