unholy.
Not holy; (by extension) evil, impure, or otherwise perverted.
Meaning & usage
Not holy; (by extension) evil, impure, or otherwise perverted.
The priest's unholy behaviour brought the church into disrepute.
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!
Where this word comes from
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.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.