profane

For those who feel that the contemporary-art world is awash in the profane, Mr. Cowan’s work offers a taste of the sacred.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026

On a never-ending feed we watch the cute and profane, sleepwalking toward an emotional state beyond shock as entertainment: the banality of passive consumption.

From Slate ● May 12, 2026

The Church saw vinum clarum as a profane wine, and its consumption was not imbued with Christian symbolism, nor attached to any table ceremony.

From Salon ● Jul. 15, 2024

I’m trying to explain the difference between sacred and profane time to my class on world religions, and baseball exemplifies the sacred variety.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 20, 2024

It was, Darwin knew, an explicitly profane diagram.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

It reads: “He that violates his oath profanes the divinity of faith itself.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 15, 2022

It profanes and pulverizes any claim she might have on representing the interests of mothers and children.

From The New Yorker ● Jun. 1, 2018

It is just not true that all today's modern art despises or profanes the past.

From The Guardian ● Apr. 18, 2013

The climax comes when Charlie puts the house up for sale, profanes their devotions, and triumphantly vilifies mother.

From Time Magazine Archive

Thoughts rose in him which were not those of a pessimist--thoughts, however, which the wise man will express as little as possible, since talk profanes them.

From The Testing of Diana Mallory by Mrs. Humphry Ward

This is both a twilight and a twilight zone; every virtue is a simulation of itself, a hollow or profaned image.

From The New Yorker ● May 21, 2019

All that is solid melts into air; all that is holy is profaned.

From New York Times ● Dec. 10, 2015

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”

From The Guardian ● Aug. 7, 2015

When the call comes from Chau that set this scene in motion, as Mike plays with Kaylee, we feel with him how his one last standing temple has been profaned.

From Salon ● Jul. 23, 2012

Everest, the purists sniffed, had been debased and profaned.

From "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer

This bears mentioning since Hargitay opened Monday’s Emmys telecast by performing “I Love TV Screens,” profaning Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll” in doing so.

From Salon ● Sep. 15, 2026

And of course there were important rules about the worship of Yahweh, including loving him, fearing him, emulating him, and not profaning his name.

From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023

“Some have even claimed that only by being here, by my presence, I am traumatizing the Kercher family again, and profaning Meredith’s memory. They are wrong.”

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 15, 2019

This task is made more difficult by the novelist’s mustache-twirling contempt for profaning fiction with reality.

From The New Yorker ● Sep. 17, 2018

But the desire of profaning Jerusalem must be conceived of as the human motive only.

From Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, Vol. 1 by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg