[OE. unháliʓ (f. un- UN-1 7 + háliʓ HOLY a.), = NFris. unhilleg: older Fl. (Kilian) onheyligh, MDu. onheilich (rare), Du. onheilig; ON. úheilagr (MDa. and Da. uhellig, Sw. ohelig).]
1. Not holy; impious, profane, wicked: a. Of persons.
c. 1000. Lambeth Ps. xlii. 1. Toscead intingan minne of unhaliʓre þeode.
1362. Langl., P. Pl., A. Prol. 3. In Habite of an Hermite vn-holy of werkes.
1526. Tindale, 2 Tim. iii. 2. The men shalbe … vnthankfull, vnholy, churlisshe.
1607. Shaks., Cor., V. vi. 119. Will you be put in minde of his blinde Fortune … by this vnholy Braggart?
1685. Baxter, Paraphr. N. T., Matt. xxv. 26. To confess God’s holy Government, and yet to be unholy, is to be self condemning.
1738. Wesley, Ps. v. ii. In Souls unholy and unclean Thou never canst delight.
1817. Shelley, Rev. Islam, X. xlvii. Unholy men, Feasting like fiends upon the infidel dead.
1827. Lady Morgan, O’Briens & O’Flahertys, III. 72. What has not been effected by the unholy alliance of despots, by kings, by Popes, by the Jesuits of all ages, catholic and protestant, christian and infidel; (for the sins of churchmen belong to their craft, and not to the religion they accidentally profess).
1833. Carlyle, Misc. (1857), III. 287. To lodge the whole unholy Brotherhood … in separate cells of the Bastille!
1844. Monthly Rev., July, 374. The rash and fanatical persons, who attract notice by their startling predictions of the early arrival of the Last Day; producing an unholy terror, a slavish fear in some, and hardening others by the irreverence and the unwarrantable boldness manifested.
absol. 1526. Tindale, 1 Tim. i. 10. The lawe is … geven … to synners, to vnholy and vnclean.
1667. Milton, P. L., XI. 106. Hast thee, and … drive out the sinful Pair, From hallowd ground th’ unholie.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, vii. 192. The idea of Nemesis quelling the insolent and smiting the unholy.
b. Of acts, things, etc.
1382. Wyclif, 2 Tim. ii. 16. Schonye thou vnhooli and veyn spechis.
1390. Gower, Conf., II. 363 (MS. A). If he pourchace By wey of thefte unholy thing.
1526. Tindale, Heb. x. 29. He … which … counteth the bloud off the testament as an vnholy thynge.
1591. Shaks., Two Gent., IV. iii. 30. To keepe me from a most vnholy match.
1632. Milton, L’Allegro, 4. In Stygian Cave forlorn ’Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy.
1653. Jer. Taylor, Serm. for Year, iv. 50. If things that are lawlull may yet be unholy in this sense; much more are unlawfull things most unholy in all senses.
1717. Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, 224. Far other dreams my erring soul employ, Far other raptures, of unholy joy.
1791. Cowper, Odyss., XXII. 479. Unholy is the voice Of loud thanksgiving over slaughter’d men.
1842. Manning, Serm., x. (1848), I. 135. Cultivation of mind, refinement,.. are often found in men of the unholiest passions.
1885. ‘Mrs. Alexander,’ Valerie’s Fate, v. There is nothing so awful, so unholy as a mere marriage of expediency.
2. colloq. Awful, dreadful. (Cf. UNGODLY a. 3.)
1865. Dickens, Mut. Fr., IV. iii. An unholy glare … shone in the eyes of Mr. Wegg.
1883. D. C. Murray, Hearts, xxxiv. (1885), 288. He had arrived … at a rather unholy sort of hour.
1898. H. B. Irving, Life of Judge Jeffreys, xix. 357. And now that the fierce Judge, the unholy terror of the Whigs and the Dissenters, was safely lodged within the walls of the Tower, the pent up fury of his enemies broke forth in streams of abusive literature.
1899. E. Phillpotts, Human Boy, 35. Trelawny had called him an ‘unholy bounder.’
3. sb. An unholy person or thing.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res., III. xi. How many other Unholies has your covering Art made holy, besides this Arabian Whinstone! Ibid. (1837), Fr. Rev., I. I. ii. All Phenomena of the spiritual kind: Dignities, Authorities, Holies, Unholies!
