unholy
Americanadjective
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not holy; not sacred or hallowed.
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impious; sinful; wicked.
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Informal. dreadful; ungodly.
They got us out of bed at the unholy hour of three in the morning.
adjective
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not holy or sacred
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immoral or depraved
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informal outrageous or unnatural
an unholy alliance
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of unholy
before 1000; Middle English; Old English unhālig (cognate with Dutch onheilig, Old Norse ūheilagr ). See un- 1, holy
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
On paper Zach Cregger and Resident Evil are the perfect unholy alliance.
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2026
The rub here is that there’s a difference between a film that becomes a cult classic because it’s genuinely underrated, and one that achieves that status through the unholy, rose-colored lens of social media obsession.
From Salon ● Sep. 14, 2026
An unholy mashup of a waiting room and a bus, the people mover is slow, uncomfortable, and offensive to the eye.
From Slate ● Aug. 18, 2026
As a New Yorker, he was originally horrified by the idea of that unholy union but once he opened his mind to the concept he became a fan.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2026
To the bombardiers, the walled city on its granite headland, drawing ever closer, looks like an unholy tooth, something black and dangerous, a final abscess to be lanced away.
From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
But last week in Mexico, where Maciel founded the ultraconservative Legion in 1941, the scandal took an even unholier turn.
From Time ● Mar. 8, 2010
But nightclub owners had unholier reasons to cry into their champagne last week.
From Time Magazine Archive
Nay, Margaret, I doubt not my thoughts have been far unholier than thine.
From In Convent Walls The Story of the Despensers by M. (Madelaine) Irwin
Eastman, the New Yorker from Ithaca who died in 1990 homeless at age 50, paraded himself as the unholiest Minimalist, an outrageous dissonant dissident even in the seemingly accepting new music community.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2021
The next instant he was spluttering and coughing, for the doctor had dexterously placed a pill, composed of the unholiest ingredients of the engineers' stores, in the wide-open cavity.
From The Wireless Officer by Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman
It was distinctly unbecoming in a woman whose sins were so grievous to ripple on so light-heartedly about the unholiest of cities when they sat there as jurors waiting to hear her plea for mercy.
From Otherwise Phyllis by Charles Dana Gibson
Amfortas, mourning that he, the unholiest of them, should be called, opens a golden shrine and takes out the crystal vessel.
From The Standard Operas (12th edition) Their Plots, Their Music, and Their Composers by George P. (George Putnam) Upton
As this apartment threatened him with still more rent veils of the unholiest, he took his leave without special ceremony, and went back without the Lector, who had to-day to give a reading.
From Titan: A Romance v. 1 (of 2) by Jean Paul Friedrich Richter
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
