Word.ws English Dictionary

unholy

/ʌnˈhəʊli/

unholy adjective: not holy; (by extension) evil, impure, or otherwise perverted.

Adjective

unholy (comparative unholier or more unholy, superlative unholiest or most unholy)

  1. Not holy; (by extension) evil, impure, or otherwise perverted.
    • The priest's unholy behaviour brought the church into disrepute.
    • Presently, however, this pleasing piece was interrupted. Suddenly there was a slight commotion, and a large powerful woman, whom I had noted as one of the most vigorous of the dancers, came, made mad and drunken with unholy excitement, bounding and staggering towards us, shrieking out as she came...1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    mishallowed, profane
  2. Dreadful, terrible, excessive, or otherwise atrocious.
    • What an unholy mess your room is in!
    • I've been spending an unholy amount of time trying to write a novel!

unholy meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

unholy in Hindi

not holy; evil
अपवित्र apavitra

unholy in Tamil

புனிதம் அற்றவர்

unholy in Urdu

غیرمقدس

unholy in Bengali

unholy
খবিশ khobiś
More languagesFewer languages
unholy in Telugu
అపవిత్రమైన apavitramaina, అపవిత్ర apavitra
unholy in Malayalam
അപവിത്ര, പവിത്രമല്ലാത്ത, അദെെവ, ദെെവഭയമില്ലാത്ത
unholy in Nepali
अपवित्र

Examples of unholy in a sentence

  • Homelander, Soldier Boy, and Thomas Godolkin form the unholy trinity of Might Makes Right in The Boysverse.
  • Dearly benighted, we gather here tonight to join these two in unholy matrimony.
  • In fact, I never found the food world's unholy grail on offer anywhere in the land.

All 15 example sentences with unholy

Synonyms of unholy

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of unholy

Forms of unholy

comparativeunholier
comparativemore unholy
superlativeunholiest
superlativemost unholy

Origin of unholy

From Middle English unholi, unhaliȝ, from Old English unhāliġ, from Proto-Germanic *unhailagaz, equivalent to un- + holy. Cognate with Scots unhaly, Dutch onheilig, German Low German unhillig, German unheilig, Danish uhellig, Swedish ohelig.

Words formed from unholy

Phrases with unholy

Words that rhyme with unholy

12 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about unholy

What does unholy mean?
Unholy means not holy; (by extension) evil, impure, or otherwise perverted.
What is unholy in Hindi?
Unholy in Hindi is अपवित्र (apavitra). See Unholy meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is unholy?
Unholy is an adjective.
How do you pronounce unholy?
Unholy is pronounced /ʌnˈhəʊli/.

Words near unholy in the dictionary

  1. unholpen
  2. unholster
  3. unholstered
  4. unholstering
  5. unholsters
  6. unholy
  7. unholy alliance
  8. unholy trinities
  9. unholy trinity
  10. unholy water
  11. unhome

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unholy (page history and authors); unholy (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); unholy (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); খবিশ (Bengali) (page history and authors); unholy (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); unholy (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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-unholy.wav.

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