impious
/ɪmˈpʌɪəs
/ /ˈɪmpɪəs /adjective
1Showing a lack of respect for God or religion: the emperor’s impious attacks on the Church...
- The lares, penates and relics of our sacred ancestors have been spared the impious axe of Jacobin tyranny.
- And this infernal monster, Popery, is now rearing his impious head again in this long-favoured country, and will, I fear, soon repeat his diabolical cruelties upon the Church of God.
- This aptly named impious herb is a useful image for his discussion of the impious disrespect of clerical hierarchy that he claims is concomitant with an improper relationship with God.
Synonyms
godless, ungodly, unholy, irreligious, sinful, immoral, unrighteous, sacrilegious, profane, blasphemous, irreverent, disrespectful;
apostate, atheistic, non-theistic, agnostic, pagan, heathen, faithless, non-believing, unbelieving, disbelieving, doubting
rare nullifidian
1.1(Of a person or act) wicked: impious villains...
- Does that mean, then, that she and her supporters are impious and immoral?
Derivatives
impiously
/ /ˈɪmpɪəsli / adverb ...- It's blasphemy to speak impiously against (to rail, to vilify, to revile) God, the Holy Spirit.
- And so death is meted out to all those who rebel against Nature impiously, because they know the things that are.
- But it's the more freewheeling entries that best suggest something else to treasure: how impiously most of these '60s-based writers conceived the craft of criticism.
impiousness
- We remember several scenes where Jesus challenges the impiousness of various priests.
- Money has shown men how to practise villainy, and taught them impiousness in every action!
- The impiousness of the fishwife's final ambition links her with Marlowe's Faustus as well as with Lady Macbeth.
Origin
Mid 16th century: from Latin impius (from in- 'not' + pius: see pious) + -ous.