noun
definition
A person or thing that is profane.
definition
A person not a Mason.
verb
definition
To violate (something sacred); to treat with abuse, irreverence, obloquy, or contempt; to desecrate
example
One should not profane the name of God.
definition
To put to a wrong or unworthy use; to debase; to abuse; to defile.
adjective
definition
Unclean; ritually impure; unholy, desecrating a holy place or thing.
definition
Not sacred or holy, unconsecrated; relating to non-religious matters, secular.
example
profane authors
definition
Treating sacred things with contempt, disrespect, irreverence, or scorn; blasphemous, impious.
definition
Irreverent in language; taking the name of God in vain
example
a profane person, word, oath, or tongue
Examples of profane in a Sentence
You will not so profane the Lord's name.
There is no foundation for the legend that he expired with profane sarcasms upon his lips.
As regards profane history his materials were exceedingly defective.
An illustration of this truth is furnished in profane history by the account which Thucydides has given us of the Peloponnesian War.
In November the Commune fitted up Notre Dame as a temple of Reason, selected an opera girl to impersonate the goddess, and with profane ceremony installed her in the choir.
Among profane authors he read the first six books of the Aeneid and Sallust's history of the Catiline conspiracy, but his education was mainly religious.
Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God.
If this were a mere human utterance it might well be deemed profane, as tending to make little of his death.
In 1550 it was proposed in Brunswick to banish all " profane " authors from the schools, and in 1589 a competent scholar was instructed to write a sacred epic on the kings of Israel as a substitute for the works of the "pagan" poets.
Verbal abuse - The collector cannot use obscene or profane language.
Also, since there are the occasional profane individuals lurking in the Literati rooms; remember that you can report inappropriate users to Yahoo.
Some also remove profane language and overt sexual talk, but on many boards language is not edited.
They are inundated with songs, television programming and video games that make use of profane language on a regular basis.
It is perhaps as much from the impulse which Ernesti gave to sacred and profane criticism in Germany, as from the intrinsic excellence of his own works in either department, that he must derive his reputation as a philologist or theologian.
Such business as did not profane the Sabbath according to Babylonian ideas cannot be quoted against their observance of their Sabbath.
A list of the Elamite deities is given by Assur-bani-pal; at the head of them was In-Susinak, "the lord of the Susians," - a title which went back to the age of Babylonian suzerainty, - whose image and oracle were hidden from the eyes of the profane.
It is, in fact, "a procedure whereby communication is established between the sacred and profane spheres by a victim, that is to say by an object destroyed in the course of the ceremony."
Another element in this ideal scheme which comes into prominence is the sharp distinction between holy and profane.
Profane cursing and swearing is made punishable by the Profane Oaths Act 1745, which directs the offender to be brought before a justice of the peace, and fined five shillings, two shillings or one shilling, according as he is a gentleman, below the rank of gentleman, or a common labourer, soldier, &c.
To obtain these heavenly mysteries, which alone make the Torah superior to profane codes, definite hermeneutical rules are employed, of which the following are the most important.
The special duty which he enjoined upon the inmates was the acquisition of knowledge, both sacred and profane, the latter, however, being subordinated to the former.
He would go from town to town, "travelling up and down as a stranger in the earth, which way the Lord inclined my heart; taking a chamber to myself in the town where I came, and tarrying sometimes a month, more or less, in a place"; and the reason he gives for this migratory habit is that he was "afraid both of professor and profane, lest, being a tender young man, he should be hurt by conversing much with either."
Before the rising of the sun they were to speak of nothing profane, but offered to it certain traditional forms of prayer as if beseeching it to rise.
All originality is crushed out and a blind and ludicrous dependence on written tradition - even in things profane - takes its place.
His fiery zeal could not blind him to the vices of the court, and heedless of personal danger he thundered against the profane honours that were addressed almost within the precincts of St Sophia to the statue of the empress.
As visible signs of his permanent services to art Munich possesses the Walhalla, the Glyptothek, the two Pinakotheken, the Odeon, the University, and many other magnificent buildings both sacred and profane.
The Franciscans had no sympathy for profane knowledge, even among the Mexicans, - sometimes publicly burning quantities of books of a scientific or miscellaneous nature; and the reading of Fenelon's Telemaque brought excommunications on a layman.
Here, while imbibing the somewhat mystical piety of the house, he had an excellent chance of carrying on his beloved classical studies; indeed, at one time he proposed to couple sacred and profane together, and go on a missionary journey to the Levant.
Equestrian seals of barons and knights; the seals of ladies of rank; the armorial seals of the gentry; and the endless examples, chiefly of private seals, with devices of all kinds, sacred and profane, ranging from the finely engraved work of art down to the roughly cut merchant's mark of the trader and the simple initial letfer of the yeoman, typical of the time when everybody had his seal.
His study of the Alexandrine theology, as well as of profane literature, brought him under the suspicions of the orthodox, and a former pupil of his, by name Constantine, accused him in an elegiac poem of having abandoned Christianity.
On the way he falls among bad companions, forgets his convent language, and shocks the sisters on arrival by profane swearing.
Why do we profane the covenant of our fathers by breaking faith with one another?
It was a stunning display of vocal dexterity - with music ranging from deeply sacred to very profane!
The german literati reversed this process with the profane French literature.
And nothing, it seems, is too profane or too outrageous to be fused with " worship.
She was perhaps the only entirely unselfish person whose name has a place in profane history.
He dealt with the immodesty of the contemporary stage, supporting his contentions by a long series of references attesting the comparative decency of Latin and Greek drama; with the profane language indulged in by the players; the abuse of the clergy common in the drama; the encouragement of vice by representing the vicious characters as admirable and successful; and finally he supported his general position by the analysis of particular plays, Dryden's Amphitryon, Vanbrugh's Relapse and D'Urfey's Don Quixote.
The unity of procedure consists in the fact that every sacrifice involves putting the divine in communication with the profane by an intermediary - the victim - which may be piacular or honorific, a messenger or a means of divination, a means of alimenting the eternal life of the species or a source of magical energy which the rite diffuses over objects in its neighbourhood.
The Greek Cynics (see Cynics) played a great part in the history of Asceticism, and they were so much the precursors of the Christian hermits that descriptions of them in profane literature have been mistaken for pictures of early monasticism.
On the other hand, since the isolation of the sacred, even when originally conceived in the interest of the profane, may be interpreted as self-protection on the part of the sacred as against defiling contact, taboo takes on the connotation of ascetic virtue, purity, devotion, dignity and blessedness.
With "the profane, ungodly, presumptuous multitude" (to quote Baxter's Saint's Rest, 16 5 o, pp. 344, 345), however, these "processions and perambulations" appear to have been very popular, though "only the traditions of their fathers."
Here the sequence of the reigns in the Biblical writer and in the profane historians - in the one, Cyrus, Ahasuerus, Artaxerxes, Darius; in the other, Cyrus, Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius - led in the past (Ewald, &c.) to the identification of Ahasuerus with Cambyses (529-522 B.e.), son of Cyrus.
At Perth and at St Andrews his sermons were followed by the destruction of the monasteries, institutions disliked in that age in Scotland alike by the devout and the profane.
As the admission of converts is no longer permitted, the faithful are enjoined to keep their doctrine secret from the profane; and in order that their allegiance may not bring them into danger, they are allowed (like Persian mystics) to make outward profession of whatever religion is dominant around them.
The other custom is the use of the turndun, as the Australians call a little fish-shaped piece of wood tied to a string, and waved so as to produce a loud booming and whirring noise and keep away the profane, especially women.
Contemporary Mahommedans did the same, for it is an error to suppose that this religion was from the first hostile to profane art.
The object of the sacrifice being to bridge the gulf between the sacred and profane worlds, the sacrificer had to remain in contact with the victim, either personally, or, to avoid ritual perils, by the intermediary of the priest.
And everything both within and without contributes to the profane and pagan character which it was Sigismondo's purpose to impress on the Christian church.
He set up an " intelligence bureau " in Rome, instituted mysteries like those of Eleusis, from which his particular enemies the Christians and Epicureans were alike excluded as " profane," and celebrated a mystic marriage between himself and the moon.
Though it is the duty of a minister to warn against irreverent or profane participation in the Lord's Supper, he himself has no right to exclude any one from communion; that can only be done as the act of himself and the elders duly assembled in session.