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OneKitly

blasphemy

nounattested in dialogue

  • //ˈblæs.fə.mi//

An act of irreverence or contempt toward a god or toward something considered sacred; an impious act, utterance, view, etc.

noun

  1. 1

    An act of irreverence or contempt toward a god or toward something considered sacred; an impious act, utterance, view, etc.

    That imam said that drawing the prophet Muhammad was a form of blasphemy.

    Had God cancelled His everlasting Covenant with Israel? The mere thought was blasphemy! But what did God's silence and the present dark cloud mean?

    Look, I don't think it ought to be blasphemy, just saying "Jehovah".

    Shepard: What happened to those other Alliance officers? The ones who came before me? Major Kyle: They wanted to take me away from here! They wanted me to abandon this place. Turn my back on my family. They spoke blasphemy! Major Kyle: I did what I could to make their end quick and painless. I had no other choice. It was necessary to protect my children. Only I can keep them safe.

  2. 2

    An act of irreverence towards anything considered inviolable; the act of disregarding a convention.

    Some historical information is given on the Panormo family of guitar makers and a whole chapter is called, "Maccaferri's 'Monstrosity'," the name given Julian's Maccaferri guitar due to the blasphemy of its having more than six strings, […]

    The market has responded well to this type of packaging [wine in cardboard containers], even if some consider it near blasphemy, and it has had a role in bringing wine to the younger generation and to social classes intimidated by the high price of many bottled products.

    I know this is utter blasphemy and completely incomprehensible to developers and power users who love their keyboard shortcuts, but some people just love having buttons on their screens with the exact name of their function written on them.

Etymology

From Middle English blasfemie, from Old French blasfemie, from Ecclesiastical Latin blasphēmia, from Ancient Greek βλασφημία (blasphēmía, “profanity”), from βλασφημέω (blasphēméō, “to slander”). Displaced native Old English tāl.

Forms

plural
blasphemies
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).