SACRILEGE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does sacrilege mean? 

• SACRILEGE (noun)
  The noun SACRILEGE has 1 sense:

1. blasphemous behavior; the act of depriving something of its sacred character

  Familiarity information: SACRILEGE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SACRILEGE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Blasphemous behavior; the act of depriving something of its sacred character

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

blasphemy; desecration; profanation; sacrilege

Context example:

desecration of the Holy Sabbath

Hypernyms ("sacrilege" is a kind of...):

irreverence; violation (a disrespectful act)

Derivation:

sacrilegious (grossly irreverent toward what is held to be sacred)

 Context examples 

It appeared to me sacrilege so soon to leave the repose, akin to death, of the house of mourning and to rush into the thick of life.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

It is a sacrilege, a crime, a villainy to hold that such a marriage is binding.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I have felt it to be a sacrilege to divert a brain which is capable of the highest original research to any lesser object.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He had committed what was to him sacrilege, sunk his fangs into the holy flesh of a god, and of a white-skinned superior god at that.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Elizabeth was sad and desponding; she no longer took delight in her ordinary occupations; all pleasure seemed to her sacrilege toward the dead; eternal woe and tears she then thought was the just tribute she should pay to innocence so blasted and destroyed.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)