Word.ws English Dictionary

heretical

/həˈɹɛtɪkəl/

heretical adjective: of or pertaining to heresy or heretics.

Adjective

heretical (comparative more heretical, superlative most heretical)

  1. Of or pertaining to heresy or heretics.
    • At least as Auxentius reports him in the covering letter which precedes Ulfila’s confession, he is as vehement in his opposition to what he sees as heretical alternatives to his own form of belief as most other participants in the controversies of the time. Heretics are not Christians but...1996, Maurice Wiles, “[The End of Arianism] Gothic Christianity”, in Archetypal Heresy: Arianism through the Centuries, Oxford, Oxon: Clarendon Press, →ISBN, page 43
  2. Contrary to mainstream or accepted opinion.
    Synonyms:
    unorthodox

heretical meaning in Hindi, Malayalam and Sanskrit

heretical in Hindi

of or pertaining to heresy or heretics
विधर्मी vidharmī

heretical in Malayalam

മതവിരുദ്ധമായ, ധർമ്മവിരുദ്ധമായ

heretical in Sanskrit

heretical, impious
पाषण्ड pāṣaṇḍa

Examples of heretical in a sentence

  • It was heretical to say that protein wasn't healthy, let alone say it promoted cancer.
  • To the east of Christendom lay another Christian society, one that Western Christians regarded as heretical.
  • The doctrine of 'pre-Adamitism,' while heretical and guaranteed to generate storms of controversy, won some prominent adherents.

All 10 example sentences with heretical

Synonyms of heretical

Forms of heretical

comparativemore heretical
superlativemost heretical
alternative form (archaic)hæretical

Origin of heretical

From Middle English, borrowed from Middle French eretical and from Medieval Latin haereticālis, from haereticus, equivalent to heretic + -al. See heretic.

Words formed from heretical

Questions about heretical

What does heretical mean?
Heretical means of or pertaining to heresy or heretics.
What is heretical in Hindi?
Heretical in Hindi is विधर्मी (vidharmī). See Heretical meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is heretical?
Heretical is an adjective.
How do you pronounce heretical?
Heretical is pronounced /həˈɹɛtɪkəl/.

Words near heretical in the dictionary

  1. Hereth
  2. Herethere
  3. Hereths
  4. Hereti
  5. heretic
  6. heretical
  7. hereticality
  8. hereticall
  9. heretically
  10. hereticalness
  11. hereticaster

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: heretical (page history and authors); heretical (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); पाषण्ड (Sanskrit) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-heretical.wav.

Cite this entry: “heretical.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/heretical. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.