Dictionary

desanctify en · VERB

Etymology

From de- + sanctify.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To remove the sanctified status of.
   • What qualifies? Anything that could significantly influence your deciding whether to rent the place — low-flying jets, overflowing drains or desanctified brothels. 2009 October 29, Randy Cohen, “Our Home Was a Bawdy House”, in The New York Times Magazine:
   • His utopias aren't "nowhere" -- counterfactual examples of how things might be in order to desanctify how things actually are. 1991 September 22, Alan Trachtenberg, “UNIVERSITY PRESSES; Shaping America's Dreams in Chicago”, in The New York Times:
   • Christianity desanctifies these in a positive sense by rendering them subservient to an entirely different kind of holiness. 1997 August 14, Martin Buber, Israel and the World, page 178:
   • In so doing, he transforms the Foxian compulsion to distinguish true martyrs from false ones —and thus to differentiate his own saint-making project from medieval hagiography—into a model of textual criticism, directed at detecting and desanctifying the false martyr through the critical medium of marginalia. 2008, Jennifer Summit, Memory's Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England, page 170:

Forms

Relateds

desanctification

Synonyms

desecrate · desacralize · unconsecrate

Translations (4)

fa تقدس زدایی کردن (to desanctify) · mi hāparu (to desanctify) · mi whakanoa (to desanctify) · nl ontheiligen (to desanctify)