unholy

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English unholi,^[2][3] inherited from Old English unhālig (“not holy, impious”),^{[4][5][6][7][8][9]} made up of un- (“not”) and hālig (“holy”),^[4][5][10] which goes back to Proto-Germanic *hailagaz (“holy”).^[11] The Middle English Dictionary and Etymonline take the Middle English word as at least partly a new formation on holi, beside the Old English one.^[2][12] It has parallels in North Frisian unhilleg, Middle Dutch onheilich, Dutch onheilig and Old Norse úheilagr, with Danish uhellig and Swedish ohelig.^[4][12][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of persons, not holy, impious: in Old English, in the Lambeth Psalter, where of unháligre þeóde translates the Latin de gente non sancta of Psalm 42.^[4][8] Merriam-Webster dates it to before the 12th century.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Old English the word was used of people; from the late 14th century it was also used of acts and things, first in the Wycliffite Bible (about 1384), of the punishment of "vnholy men", and in Chaucer's Parson's Tale, which defines sacrilege as taking a holy or an vnholy thing from a holy place.^[4][2][12] Chaucer has it twice and Gower once.^[3] Johnson (1755) gave the senses "profane, not hallowed" and "impious, wicked", quoting Hooker.^[13] From the early 16th century the unholy meant impious people as a class,^[6] and since 1834, in Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, an unholy was an unholy person or thing.^[4][14] The colloquial intensive sense "awful, dreadful", as in an unholy row, is recorded from 1842, in a letter of Dickens, and has a parallel in ungodly.^[4][12][14] The phrase unholy alliance, for an alliance between unlikely or ill-matched parties, especially in politics, plays on the Holy Alliance.^[6][1] A verb unholy, to make unholy, is recorded once, before 1555, in a letter of the martyr John Philpot.^[4][14]

Timeline

• Old English – of persons, not holy, impious.^[4][8]
• c. 1384 – of acts and things, unholy, wicked, in the Wycliffite Bible.^[4][2][12]
• early 16th century – noun, the unholy, unholy people.^[6]
• before 1555 – verb, to make unholy.^[4][14]
• 1834 – noun, an unholy person or thing.^[4][14]
• 1842 – colloquial, awful, dreadful.^[4][12][14]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Not holy or sacred; showing no regard for what is holy; profane or impious.^[15][5][4]
2. Wicked, immoral or corrupt.^[15][5]
3. (informal) Dreadful, outrageous or excessive: They came home at an unholy hour.^[15][6][4]
4. unholy alliance: an alliance, especially a political one, between parties that would not be expected to work together.^[6][15]

Noun

1. An impious or disreputable person, or with the, such people as a class.^[5][4][6]

Word family

• unholily
• unholiness

Related words

• holy
• hallow
• whole
• ungodly
• unhallowed

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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 Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
9. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
11. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
12. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b c d e f Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
15. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins