Profanity

//prəˈfænɪti// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The quality of being profane; quality of irreverence, of treating sacred things with contempt. uncountable

    "The overwhelming power of his imagination led him to contemplate acts of impiety and profanity, and to a vivid realisation of the dangers these involved."

  2. 2
    vulgar or irreverent speech or action wordnet
  3. 3
    Obscene, lewd or abusive language. countable

    "He ran up and down the street screaming profanities like a madman."

Synonyms

All synonyms
cursingswearingabusebad languagebillingsgateblasphemousness

Example

More examples

"Leaving an unburied corpse behind is profanity."

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin profānitās. By surface analysis, profane + -ity.

Related phrases

profanity delay

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.