blasphemous

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English blasfemous,^[2][3] borrowed from Late Latin blasphēmus (“evil-speaking, blasphemous”) with its ending replaced by -ous,^[4][5][6][7] or perhaps borrowed from Middle French blasphemeus (late 14th century).^[4][3] The Latin adjective, recorded from the 4th or 5th century, is from Ancient Greek βλάσφημος (blásphēmos, “evil-speaking, slanderous”),^[4][8][5][9] which in Hellenistic Greek also meant blasphemous.^[4] The Greek adjective is from the verb meaning to speak profanely or to slander,^[4][3] and its second element is φήμη (phḗmē, “speech”);^[4][10][11] the OED calls the first element of uncertain origin, while Dictionary.com and Collins connect it with a word for harm or evil.^[4][10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Showing contempt for God or sacred things: before 1425, of blasphemous swearing, in the Lanterne of Light.^[4][2] Etymonline dates it to the early 15th century,^[3] Merriam-Webster Unabridged to the 15th century.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The English adjective kept for a time the older Greek sense of slander: from 1551 to 1678 it could mean abusive or defamatory.^[4][5] The religious sense has remained the main one, used especially of oaths and curses;^[4][9] Johnson (1755) defined it as "impiously irreverent with regard to God".^[12] Since 1846 it has also been used by exaggeration of disrespect toward anything treated as sacrosanct.^[4]

Timeline

• before 1425 – showing contempt for God or sacred things.^[4][2]
• 1551 – abusive, slanderous, defamatory (obsolete by 1678).^[4]
• 1846 – by exaggeration, disrespectful toward something regarded as sacrosanct.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Showing contempt or gross irreverence toward God or sacred things; impious, profane: The council banned the play as blasphemous.^[9][11][4]
2. By exaggeration, disrespectful toward something widely treated as beyond criticism.^[4]
3. (obsolete, 1551–1678) Abusive or slanderous.^[4][5]

Word family

• blasphemously
• blasphemousness
• nonblasphemous

Related words

• blaspheme
• blasphemy
• blame

Usage notes

The OED notes that 16th- and 17th-century verse sometimes stresses the second syllable,^[4] and Johnson observed that Milton accented it so, although the usual stress was on the first.^[12]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.